Catholics: Your diocesan newspaper is worth saving

Dec 16, 2022

By Elisha Valladares-Cormier
After more than 150 years, the Catholic Sentinel, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon put ink to paper for the final time. The archdiocese and Oregon Catholic Press, which published the paper, announced that the Sentinel and its Spanish-language counterpart, El Centinela, would be shut down in order “to focus more on evangelisation and outreach and less on classic journalism.”

The Sentinel, which was shut down on October 1, is not the only diocesan newspaper to announce its closure this year — Catholic New York published its final issue on Nov 17 — and it seems likely that many other diocesan print publications will eventually meet the same fate.

To me, the Sentinel’s demise is a blow similar to losing a family member. I first read the newspaper in 2014, when my family moved to Oregon during my junior year of high school. I already knew I wanted to be a journalist, but I was still attached to my pipe dream of becoming a New York Yankees beat reporter. The only diocesan newspapers I had read to that point were effectively bulletin boards for diocesan events with a handful of Catholic News Service stories sprinkled in.

The Sentinel was different. The first issues I read had stories about real issues facing Catholics in western Oregon: a couple who abstained from sex for 19 months after becoming Catholic in order to pursue annulments for their previous marriages; efforts to pass a bill allowing undocumented immigrants — a growing contingent of the Church in Oregon and elsewhere — to drive legally and support their families; and a priest’s ministry to Portland’s hipster bar scene. (It is unclear how long the Oregon Catholic Press will keep the Sentinel archives online.)

These were stories I had never read anywhere else. A few months later, I wrote my first article for the Sentinel, a 400-word reflection on the compatibility of technology and faith. From there, my appreciation for the Sentinel and the mission of diocesan newspapers only grew. In college, I wrote my senior thesis on diocesan news publications because I wanted to dive into the “why” of their existence.

There was a certain nobility to the Sentinel, and as I learned more about diocesan newspapers around the country, I realised it was something intrinsic to the profession of Catholic journalism.

The early Catholic newspapers — there were 17 Catholic publications in the United States by 1849, and some 325 of them six decades later — had three primary roles: to catechise Catholics, to inform people of what the Church was doing, and especially to evangelise to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Many were founded with the expressed intention of combating the anti-Catholic bigotry and misinformation that was rampant throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. As the Sentinel’s founder, Henry Herman, wrote in its first editorial, the paper was intended to be exactly what it sounded like: “a sentinel or defender of our faith from outside and inside disturbances, and to our brethren, a medium for the interchange of ideas, having in view mutual improvement and benefit.”

To the very end, that is exactly the product the Sentinel gave its readers: catechising, informing and evangelising. Its final issue could have been exclusively filled with sentimental goodbyes and letters to the editor, but it featured the same kind of content that had been its hallmark for decades, including stories about affordable housing being developed in Portland by Catholic Charities and the growing intensity of pro-life vigils after the Dobbs decision.

The Sentinel was consistently ranked at the top of its class in recent years, winning awards and setting a standard for the 130 or so diocesan newspapers and magazines now in print. If it can be shut down, so can any diocesan newspaper or magazine. Many bishops and diocesan decision-makers are becoming increasingly convinced that print is not worth the physical or financial investment, but there are statistics to the contrary. In 2017, a study by the magazine Content Evangelist estimated that diocesan print publications had a combined circulation of 6.4 million, or 24 per cent of all Catholic households in the United States. The same study estimated that only four per cent of Catholics followed a Facebook account from a diocese and two per cent followed a diocesan Twitter account — shares that may have increased over the past five years but are unlikely to have reached the impact of print publications.

As America’s J.D. Long-García wrote in 2020, when he was president of the Catholic Media Association, “We cannot throw away print. Choosing to produce only a digital product is choosing economics over evangelisation. The Catholic Church in the United States and throughout the world has a story to tell. And it is a story that is worth telling in print.”

The demise of the Sentinel and every diocesan newspaper that follows it is a devastating loss. Without them, who will tell the story of the local Church? The Sentinel has catechised, informed and evangelised generations of Oregonians for more than 150 years. It has told countless stories of Catholics at their highest and their lowest. No matter what new communication efforts are made by dioceses, the impact and reach of these stories cannot be replicated in a digital product.

The worst story is the untold story. Catholics everywhere deserve and need their stories told by their local Church, because they inspire their local Church. With more diocesan newspapers likely to fall the way of the Sentinel in the future, we must not underestimate the true cost of their absence. Their demise will undoubtedly weaken the Church’s ability to catechise, inform and evangelise. -- America