Two years ago, I arrived in our Diocese and began working to
serve its mission. My immediate task, per the request of Bishop Michael F. Burbidge,
was to observe and assess what we were doing in the area of communications and
publishing — which, in the Catholic Church, centers on evangelization — as well
as how we were doing that good work.
Bishop Burbidge and I discussed his vision and priorities for the
Office of Communications and Catholic Herald, and
we established several goals to improve our ability to inspire, educate, and
inform the Catholic faithful in this Diocese. Those goals included expanding
our digital media content and outlets, increasing the distribution of our print
publication to 100 percent of registered households, and ensuring that we are
operating as efficiently as possible.

After thorough review, as well as consultation with the
Presbyteral Council and the Bishop’s Executive Staff, Bishop Burbidge has
accepted my recommendations to make the following changes to the operations of
the Catholic Herald.
Daily, weekly and biweekly content
First, going forward, the primary destination for timely, daily
diocesan and Church news will be the Catholic Herald
website, CatholicHerald.com. This will not be the only place for news, but it
will be the primary place we direct parishioners for information on the Church
and our Diocese.
Second, for those who wish to receive weekly stories, videos and
podcasts from the Catholic Herald, we will
encourage subscriptions to our weekly e-newsletter. This resource already
exists, but since it has not yet reached its potential, we will give it more
attention. (On the Catholic Herald website, look
for “Newsletter Signup” to join for free.)
Lastly, the Catholic Herald will
move to a biweekly print publishing schedule for the foreseeable future. In the
summer time, the Catholic Herald already uses a
biweekly schedule. As such, we will essentially not return to our weekly
publishing schedule this September.
Expanding our readership
As you might expect, going from a weekly to biweekly schedule
saves money in printing and postage. We will be reinvesting those funds by
expanding our current print distribution of 40 percent of households to roughly
80 percent of households, with no need to increase annual parish assessment for
the Catholic Herald, and it will not require
staff reductions. Due to various factors, including print and postage costs, we
will know soon exactly how much our distribution will grow. While this
publishing change does not reach the desired goal of 100 percent of registered
households, it is a great improvement.
More focus on teaching the Faith
The 2017 Communications Survey clearly conveyed the desire of the
faithful to understand better what the Church teaches (especially on
contemporary issues) and why we believe what we believe. In fact, 57 percent
said that information about the Church’s views on societal issues was “very
important” and 28 percent said it was “somewhat important.” Sixty-nine percent
of people ages 18-24 said information about the Church’s views on societal
issues was “very important.”
The Catholic
Herald’s evangelistic mission
The need to connect the faithful better to the wisdom and
richness of the Church’s teaching is obvious. The Catholic
Herald will be aligned even more closely to the larger vision and
mission of the Diocese with these changes. The focus will be more evenly shared
with our evangelistic mission of drawing people closer to God, especially those
who have fallen away from the Church and/or no longer participate fully in the
Faith. The Catholic Herald must reach out to
those struggling in their faith and who are enticed by increasing cultural
secularization. By inspiring, educating and informing the Catholic faithful, as
an extension of the mission of our Bishop, we will more completely evangelize
our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Growth in digital media
As we move in this new direction, the communications team and I
will continue looking for innovative and creative ideas. This revised
publishing schedule will give staff more time to devote to digital media, which
has been growing rapidly across many platforms and shown tremendous promise.
This potential was a major factor in identifying new operating models for our
publication.

Through the extraordinary generosity of Bishop’s Lenten Appeal
and Catholic Communication Campaign donors, Bishop Burbidge made an investment
in the area of digital communications early this year with the completion of a
new, high-tech multimedia studio for podcast and video production. This studio
has saved tremendous amounts of production time through its efficient build and
has opened up new opportunities for interviews and storytelling. In fact, two
multimedia producer roles were established with a sizeable portion of their
time being devoted to studio production. The studio has elevated the ceiling of
our potential.
Thank you!
Many of you have reached out expressing support for some of the
newer projects the department has launched or tested. Please know how grateful
your encouragement has been to me and the Communications team at the Chancery.
Thank you for your support. If you have questions, recommendations or
suggestions, please feel free to reach out to us anytime.
Atwell is the diocesan Chief Communications Officer.