More than a news service

Last month the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced it would close the New York and Washington offices of Catholic News Service (CNS). While the CNS Rome bureau will remain open and continue to offer news from the Vatican and around the world, the U.S. offices are set to close at the end of 2022.

Since the announcement on May 4, many journalists who work in the Catholic press have offered their opinions about the decision. Uniformly, the move has been panned as short-sighted, stunning and regrettable. 

After joining the Catholic press in 1983, I quickly learned the importance of having a wire service that provided national and international content to fill the pages of diocesan newspapers at which I worked. What I also learned over the years was the quality of journalism (writing and photography) and the professionalism that made up the Catholic News Service team.

Established in 1920, its first editor, Justin McGrath, “brought in a team of editors and reporters from leading U.S. dailies to cover the turbulent news of the 1920s,” according to CNS. News such as “the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the candidacy of Al Smith as the first major-party Catholic nominee for president, the story of communist persecution in Russia, the civil strife over British rule in Northern Ireland and the work of the American church in helping Europe recover from the ravages of World War I.”

Like my colleagues around the country, I lament the decision to shutter a news service that has served the church for more than a century. Besides the fact that CNS’s demise will create a void that will probably not be filled (at least not to the same measure of journalistic excellence), I have other reasons to regret its closure.

As a young staff writer at the Intermountain Catholic in Salt Lake City, I filed my first story with CNS (at the time known as National Catholic News Service) after major flooding in northern Utah caused some $200 million in damage. What a thrill to see my story and photos distributed to Catholic newspapers around the United States and beyond. Since that story ran in June 1983, I’ve submitted countless photos and stories to CNS over these 30-plus years.

Above, two photos taken in 1983 were picked up by Catholic News Service. They accompanied a story about flooding in Utah.

Providing news and feature stories from diocesan newspapers has been one of the services CNS offers to its clients. It has allowed an international network of Catholic publications to share information in a timely fashion. Soon this service will all disappear.

It is unfortunate that the bishops who made the decision to shutter CNS do not understand how important news in their own backyards will no longer have the reach it had thanks to CNS. 

On several occasions I have been told by co-workers in the Diocese of Green Bay that they saw a story I had written or or a photo I had taken in another diocesan newspaper or a national publication like America, Our Sunday Visitor or National Catholic Reporter. It was a badge of honor for them to know that their diocese was receiving national attention.

Catholic publications aren’t the only place my photos have appeared. Even the USCCB has used photos picked up by CNS on their website.

There are other ways the roots of CNS branched out across Wisconsin. 

One of the wire service’s previous editors, Floyd Anderson, was born in Superior, home of the Superior Catholic Herald, where I served as editor for 14 years. Floyd was editor at CNS from 1963 to 1969.

Jim Alt, one of my predecessors at The Compass (actually an earlier diocesan publication called The Spirit), served at CNS in the early 1970s. He oversaw a faith education series called “Know Your Faith,” today known as “Faith Alive.”

The other Wisconsin connection to CNS is Marquette University. Its  journalism program trained many Catholic journalists who worked for CNS, including Tom Lorsung, Jim Lackey and Laurie Hansen Cardona.

Tom is a Milwaukee native and a MU journalism grad. He joined NC News in 1972 as photo editor and retired in 2003 after 15 years as director. Jim was a staff writer at The Catholic Messenger in Davenport, Iowa, before joining CNS in 1979. Laurie began her career at the Milwaukee Catholic Herald before joining CNS as a staff writer, then returning to Milwaukee to serve as managing editor at the Catholic Herald.

I know the shuttering of CNS is a professional loss to so many publications. But it is also a personal loss to folks like me who have worked in Catholic media. I’ve met a lot of people and made a lot of good friends at CNS. It won’t surprise me when church leaders regret the decision to close CNS. Perhaps during the next presidential election or even sooner, they will see how thoughtful backgrounders and analyses on important issues written by CNS staffers will be replaced by tweets, memes and biased reports from content creators with a personal agenda.