Voice For Local Parishes Quieted As U.S. Catholic News Service Kaput

Social media and the Internets promised the world more connection along with an easier and free flow of information. 

Like most new tech . . . Corporations, government and trolls have ruined everyone's fun. 

Accordingly, we take a peek a local name check in the demise of an important info outlet read by many Kansas City residents . . .

Earlier this month, the U.S.C.C.B. announced that it would shutter the New York and Washington bureaus of CNS amid a restructuring of its communications office. Twenty-one employees will be laid off, the conference said. The news agency’s Rome bureau will remain open, and its content will be available to subscribers without cost beginning next year.

Catholic media is not alone when it comes to financial challenges and the shuttering of historic newspapers.

A report from Poynter found that more than 100 local newspapers shut down in 2020 and 2021, including Pittsburgh’s Catholic newspaper. During that period, the Catholic newspapers in Buffalo, N.Y., Kansas City, Mo., and Newark, N.J., each discontinued their print operations . . .

Malea Hargett, the editor of Arkansas Catholic, predicted that “there’s going to be a big gap in what our parishioners are going to know about what’s going on in the U.S. and throughout North America.” Secular newspapers have shed religion coverage in recent years, and Ms. Hargett said Catholics cannot depend on them for robust coverage of the church.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Catholic News Service closure opens the door to partisan and ideological church coverage, Catholic journalists warn

With the decision by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to close the U.S. bureaus of Catholic News Service later this year, editors and other journalists at Catholic newspapers throughout the United States worry that coverage of the church will suffer.