MASHPEE

Crucial events come and go with the zap of a lightning bolt. Balloon Boy — here today; gone tomorrow. Energy conservation — that was so Bush Years. Like Hamlet’s Ghost, world crises blast our consciousness and dissolve into nothingness before we realize what’s happened.

In some ways, our brave new world is convenient: I work at home but write for publications worldwide. On the other hand, I may be in communication with people worldwide, but I often never see another human for the whole of my work day. And perhaps even worse, as the material world disintegrates, we increasingly lack a tangible sense of reward beyond the abstract electronic dollar signs that flash on our screens when we look up our online bank accounts.

As a young reporter, I reveled in seeing my story in print. For me, the newsprint was a kind of certificate of value, an affirmation that I myself was worth something.

One such reward I particularly remember. I had a leave of absence from my newspaper to freelance in West Africa, where I had been in the Peace Corps.

Several months after my return, a friend called.

“I loved your story in the Christian Science Monitor,” he said.

“You did?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The venerable Boston-based daily, established by Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy in 1908, had used a story of mine about a village cane carver in Senegal whose sons had left to go to Dakar. I still have the clip.

So it was with great sadness that I heard, earlier this year, that the Monitor would end its daily print edition. It’s daily content would be Web-based only. A weekly print edition would, however, be available. I subscribed.

A century ago, Mary Baker Eddy was frustrated with the Fox News-style yellow journalism of that era, pushed by such driven men as Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, the right-wing Chandler family and their like. (For example: Hearst and Pulitzer are jointly credited with having started the Spanish-American War; the Chandlers are credited with stealing water from some Californians to make Los Angeles grow.)

Eddy wanted a newspaper that provided facts, explanatory articles and long-term perspective. Her paper, blessedly free of sensationalism and axe-murderers and that era’s version of silly balloon boys, helped make journalism a respectable career.

So far, the Monitor weeklies in my mailbox have been terrific. The Sept. 27 issue put the nasty health-care debate in perspective: From 1998 to 2008, lobbyists in Washington increased from 10,662 to 14,800, a bit less than 50 percent, and their expenditures soared from $1.4 billion to about $3.3 billion — nearly 300 percent.

Guess what industry spent the most on lobbying in 2008? Nope, not energy. Health care. The industry spent nearly half a billion dollars, a hundred million dollars more than the energy industry. Ah-hah!

“The umpire of health-care reform” will be Alan Furmin, the stealthy behind-the-scenes Senate parliamentarian. He will have oodles of power over my future insurance bills. When the Senate health-care debate begins and Democrats try to end-run Republicans by using the “reconciliation” rule to pass the legislation by a simple majority vote rather than the usual 60 votes, Furmin will be the Senate’s “Supreme Court” and rule on whether the strategy is allowable or not. Hmmm . . . .

This is exactly the kind of perspective that has all but disappeared in contemporary American journalism. It’s easier and cheaper to yell about the balloon boy than to explain to the public what the heck in going on in Washington. And, boy, have the politicians taken advantage of the information gap.

In 1908, Mary Baker Eddy promised to give the public a publication “to injure no man but to bless all mankind.” The new weekly Monitor promised to be a “review of global news and ideas.” In an age in which commitment seems meaningless, it’s actually delivering on that promise.

And, despite what some say, sitting in an easy chair and reading this kind of journalism is a contemplative process, the kind that improves the democratic process, and that just doesn’t happen when I sit in front of a bells-ringing, “you-got-mail!!!”-screaming computer screen.

Wendy Williams, a Cape Cod-based journalist and occasional contributor, is working on her new book — about the inner life of giant squid.