Friday, September 15, 2006
Subsidizing The Catholic Press
Three approaches I can pass on for your commentary. Two are described in this CNS news brief, and the third is from my own diocese.
Seattle WA: Quoting increased printing and postage costs, the Bishop Brunett reduces the Catholic Northwest Progress from weekly to every two weeks. (As an aside, with a name like that, I can see why Seattle conservatives have their alternate press organ.)
Alexandria LA: Bishop Herzog cranks up the presses in Louisiana: twelve hundred paid subscriptions are now 16,500 freebies.
Kansas City-St Joseph MO: Parishes subsidize the Catholic Key. We're mandated to have a subscription base equivalent to a bit more than one-third of our registered parishioners. Whatever shortfall between private subscriptions and that percentage is covered in the parish budget.
It's a tough dilemma for bishops. No longer being pastors, they don't have a weekly platform for their written thoughts. The mailing list for a dicoese is so much more enormous than a parish's.
On the other hand, you have to wonder about publications that only remain afloat through subsidization.
Disclosures: My wife and I do have a Key subscription, and we do read most of it. But when done with it, it heads to the bunnies' litter boxes. (Don't tell her I said that in public, though.)
