What "plays in Peoria," however, is already part of a trend unlikely to slow: Bishops are cutting print publications or shuttering operations altogether, only to replace diocesan newspapers with soft-news magazines, websites and public relations content.

Meanwhile, new online, niche and sometimes ideological Catholic media are filling the gap.

The cuts to local Catholic media reflect wider journalistic trends of financially motivated decisions.

The week after Peoria's announcement, the Los Angeles Times laid off more than 20% of its newsroom, and Sports Illustrated announced it was terminating "almost all" its staff — leading one commentator to call it "a week from hell in media."

Catholic media — especially diocesan papers that provide local coverage and often serve as the vehicle for a bishop's regular column — are not exempt from the larger forces affecting journalism, experts say.

In addition, they are negatively impacted by the decline in religious affiliation and participation in the U.S. and by competition from new Catholic media.

In fact, the Peoria paper wasn't the only diocesan publication to cease operations at the end of 2023.

The Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, whose first Catholic newspaper dates to the 19th century, published the last issue of The Compass at the end of December.

A year earlier, the country's largest diocesan newspaper, Catholic New York, shut down, just as the U.S. bishops' conference closed its national operations of Catholic News Service.

Other recent closures include Seattle's paper in 2013, Akron's in 2015 and Detroit's in 2018.

The number of Catholic newspapers in the U.S. dropped from 196 in 2006 to 118 in 2020, according to the Catholic Media Association.

The organisation's current directory lists 84 newspapers as members.

"We need to take a step back and look at why this is not working," said Helen Osman, president of SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication.

"This goes beyond just Catholic journalism. In this country we have so devalued the idea of local journalism that we're in a big hole."

Although she is frustrated by the loss of quality diocesan newspapers, Osman, who has worked in Catholic media and communication for nearly 40 years, says change is inevitable — and clearly already underway.

"I don't think the practice and the art of journalism will change, but I think our understanding of how we do it in the church may change," she said.

"We're at a point in this country where we need to rethink the business model of journalism and its place in the community.

"When we do it best, whether Catholic or otherwise, local journalism builds up the common good." Continue reading

An unlikely invitation had landed in my Whatsapp messages, and yet again, my plans to spend a few months writing a new book were interrupted. This time the invitation was to help with the work toward the Synod on Synodality.

It is difficult to think of an ecclesial process more important to me, so I gladly set aside the pile of books.

I have since learned more about the church than I could ever have imagined, and the synod process has come to seem even more urgent and fruitful. Much of what I have learned has been surprising.

In the early months of my involvement, several journalists said that the synod process would inevitably reveal a church divided culturally between Europe and Africa, divided between clergy and laity, and at war with itself over moral issues.

I was told that participation was so low as to make the process meaningless, that the reports had probably all been pre-written, and that the process would be either a sell-out or a stitch-up.

These were fairly dispiriting statements to take into the process I was preparing for: reading the episcopal conference reports as well as the reflections produced by religious congregations, lay movements and associations, plus the many individual submissions made to the synod.

If I were to talk to the same journalists now, I would tell them that their preconceptions were wrong.

I came away from the process with a deeper sense of the profound and vulnerable questions raised by synod participants.

For some people, this was the first time they had spoken publicly about their hopes and fears for the church. They felt a profound sense of dignity in contributing but worried about whether they would really make any difference.

In a culture that prizes certainty and opposition in political discourse, many people gave voice to their uncertainty and their desire for guidance and accompaniment, and for the communal spaces that would make reflecting together possible.

One bishop compared the synod's method of spiritual conversation to a disarmament process, and another told me his diocese would never be the same again (a good thing!).

Many who participated in the synod spoke honestly about the difficulty of genuinely listening to someone you disagree with, or with whom you feel you have little in common beyond a baptismal identity.

But it also became evident to me that the church is not divided in a culture war between continents.

Many of the most significant tensions and cleavages lie between neighbors, whose histories shape much of their ecclesial experience.

The innovation of meeting at the level of the continent (something with which Latin America now has long experience) is one of the least mentioned but one of the most important aspects of the synod.

Another discovery: The questions of the status and participation of women, increased transparency in the church, and how to hold together love, mercy and truth in extending a welcome were not solely the concerns of the global North. These echoed from every corner of the Catholic world.

It is true that some individuals and groups remain skeptical and even hostile toward the process; others now wish they had had more chances to become involved. Continue reading

I would get the paper for my dad from the driveway every morning. Standing in bare feet on the concrete, I'd open it and scan the headlines before I brought it inside.

My addiction to news, in other words, is longstanding, and I've been this way for decades: reading, listening, watching, producing.

Getting up with it in the morning. Inviting it into bed at night. But I have a confession to make. It is getting harder and harder to be a news junkie.

That was why I was so fascinated by a similar confession from another journalist, Amanda Ripley, in a Washington Post column titled, "I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?"

The problem is partly me. I have consumed ever larger quantities of news because it is so easy. The internet, podcasts, my phone — news is everywhere. "The news crept into every crevice of my life," Ripley wrote. Ditto.

But part of the problem is the stories we are being told.

Ripley says we aren't equipped to handle the news, conflict, controversy, and disasters 24/7.

The nonstop coverage too often leaves us agitated and anxious, yet provides us with no hope, no way we can do something about whatever the disasters are we read about. Go through any normal newspaper (of which there are fewer and fewer) and count the anxiety-producing news stories and the anger-producing commentaries. They are overwhelming.

This is why Ripley suggests, that an estimated 40% of Americans are avoiding the news.

The news industry is in crisis.

This crisis extends to Catholic media as well.

At the recent Catholic Media Conference in Portland, Oregon, Notre Dame professor Timothy O'Malley gave a keynote address on the future of Catholic journalism.

"The Church is experiencing a crisis related to communications," he said.

This isn't a matter of switching from newsprint to Facebook. Rather, it is a crisis of authority that is afflicting church, state, and press.

The worry of all this, to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, is that to distrust all traditional authority and news media does not mean one believes in nothing.

Rather, it becomes more likely one might believe anything.

The vacuum left in distrust's wake is filled with fake news and distorted news.

We become both more suspicious and more credulous, as recent years have shown.

This is dangerous for democracy, and it is dangerous for a Church that believes its very mission of evangelization hinges on both authority and trust.

In the world of Catholic journalism, many dioceses are replacing their papers with inspirational magazines or poorly trafficked websites.

Local Catholic news is getting harder to find. (The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is a rarity in that it supports not only a magazine of news and culture, but also newsletters, a dynamic website, and active social media.)

In both the nation — where a quarter of all newspapers have folded since 2005 — and the Church, with a 40% drop, the decline of news media suggests a crisis of involvement and engagement with long-term implications.

Without using the phrase, both O'Malley and Ripley lean in the direction of something being proposed as "constructive" or "solutions journalism."

It grows out of a concern that if all we journalists can do is describe how terrible the world is, we will continue to lose readers. We need to give people some hope, some means of responding.

For Ripley, hope is critical.

"There is a way to communicate news — including very bad news — that leaves us better off as a result," she wrote.

For O'Malley, too much of Catholic journalism has descended into "propaganda," ideological clashes, or a kind of safe parochialism that neither offends nor interests. The answer is to engage the world, not run from it or wag a finger at it.

"The Church is not a culture meant to be turned in upon herself, but a culture intended to be leaven for every dimension of human life," O'Malley said. "Our neighbours' joys and sufferings are our joys and sufferings, no matter if they're Catholic or not."

If journalism, Catholic or otherwise, is not just to survive but thrive, we need to get beyond stoking outrage or playing it safe by not outraging anybody. What we need is to give people a sense of their own agency, that there is hope, and they can contribute.

At its best, Catholic journalism has always tried to tell its story with truth, not propaganda, with charity, not scapegoating.

The question now is if this kind of journalism can still be produced and if it will have the support of both its publishers and its readers.

• Greg Erlandson - Published in Angelus News