Related
Translate
Get RNB via RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Get RNB via Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Follow: Twitter
Most Popular
This Week:
- Polygamist Sect Leader Convicted of Sexual Assault
- Jury takes 14 minutes to convict self-proclaimed pot pastor
- Supreme Court upholds cult AUM Shinrikyo members’ death sentences
- Newspaper continues series of exposés of Scientology cult
- Epic Mohammad movie in pipeline
- Coptic Christian Blogger in Egypt Pressured to Convert to Islam in Prison
- Italian judge convicts 23 in CIA kidnapping of Muslim cleric
- Fort Hood shooting: imam says Nalid Malik Husan ‘didn’t seem like an extremist’
- I know the dark side of Scientology…I almost lost my friend when she became obsessed with it
- Cult leader Warren Jeffs’ attorneys argue sect leader faced wrong charge
Publisher John Lewis Selover,
More articles on this topic: Christian ScienceAssociated Press, Aug. 2, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOSTON (AP) — John Lewis Selover, the publisher of The Christian Science Monitor and a Christian Science Church leader who helped shepherd the church’s expansion, has died. He was 72.
Selover, of Boston, died Friday “among family, after a brief illness at home,” said Peter Osterlund, spokesman for the Christian Science Board of Directors. Osterlund said the family declined to specify the nature of the illness.
Selover was elected to the board of directors in 1985, and later became the board’s vice chairman. In 1998, he became the manager of The Christian Science Publishing Society, which publishes the daily newspaper in Boston.
During his tenure as publisher, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its political cartoons, and expanded and redesigned its Web site to increase online readership fivefold, said Editor Paul Van Slambrouck.
Calling him “an editor’s dream publisher,” Van Slambrouck remembered Selover’s fearlessness and enthusiasm.
“He was just fiercely protective of the paper’s independence; he was very encouraging of bringing diverse views onto the Op-ed page,” he said. “But at the end of the day, he made it fun. For all the seriousness we see in the business everyday, he saw no reason it shouldn’t be fun.”
Van Slambrouck recalled that Selover established a personal rapport with everyone at the Monitor, from the greenest staff to the topmost editors, and kept his hand in the newsroom by reading editorials and stories before they were published. He also was a music lover who relaxed by playing show tunes on the piano and regularly attending the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
A San Francisco native and the son of Christian Scientists, Selover graduated from Principia College in Illinois, and served in the Army before returning to San Francisco to start an advertising career. He later worked in marketing and public relations.
The Monitor plans to run an appreciation of Selover’s life in Monday’s editions, Osterlund said. The newspaper does not have an obituary page.
Selover became a Christian Science “practitioner” — a spiritual healer — in 1975 and a teacher of Christian Science in 1982.
He served the church in many capacities, including as manager of community and public affairs from 1970 through 1975, when the 14-acre Christian Science Plaza in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood was built.
His main role during that time was to work with the community, said Karen Craft, chairwoman of the publishing society’s board of trustees.
“At the time there was a lot of uncertainty and concern,” Craft said. “His job was to work with all the residents, the little ladies and the men who had lived there for ages, and listen to them, assure them and comfort them, which he did splendidly.”
He helped found the Fenway Alliance, a coalition of some of Boston’s cultural institutions, and served as a board member until 1998. He also was on the governing board of the Washington, D.C.-based National Foundation for Women Legislators.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, a daughter and son, two grandchildren and a brother. A memorial service was being planned for the end of August.
What You Can Do From Here
|
Read More Articles On These Topics
 Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article
Subscribe
Read Another Article
 Previous entry: Cinema-goers could soon be experiencing Next entry: Cult Killings:
RNB Homepage with latest headlinesFind Related Information
Find Related Books
|
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
