Our Sunday Visitor announces launch of new Catholic news service in 2023

PORTLAND, Ore. (CNS) — Scott Richert, publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, said July 6 the Indiana-based Catholic publishing company would fill the void left behind by the closure of the domestic operations of Catholic News Service in January 2023 with OSV News.

He made the announcement at the Catholic Media Conference in Portland and described the new venture as a new Catholic news service.

“The best is yet to come,” he told the group of Catholic journalists and communication leaders in a brief announcement prior to the afternoon’s keynote address during the July 4-7 annual conference of the Catholic Media Association.

Richert said that after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced the CNS closure May 4, effective at the end of the year, he and his colleagues have been asking “not should OSV do something, but what should OSV do.”

“OSV News is the answer,” he said, adding that it would be a “new renaissance” in Catholic media.

Our Sunday Visitor, founded in 1912 in Huntington, Ind., produces a weekly print newspaper, periodicals, books, parish resources and church envelopes for parishioners’ church contributions. The newspaper and its online site frequently publish CNS content as a client of the news service.

An OSV news release about its new venture said the company began talks with the USCCB after the announcement of CNS’s closure and “reached an agreement to acquire rights to the platform that CNS uses to produce and distribute its content,” which will be on the same domain: Catholicnews.com.

Richert told the Portland group, which included several editors of CNS client subscribers from diocesan newspapers and national publications such as America magazine and National Catholic Reporter, that if they sign up for OSV News before the end of the year will have a “seamless experience” since it will launch the day after CNS closes.

He also announced that OSV will be acquiring all of the digital archives owned by CNS, along with rights to existing and future content from CNS Rome, which will remain open and will operate independently from OSV. The Rome bureau of CNS will  provide content at no charge starting next year, the USCCB announced in May.

“The digital archives of CNS are of great importance, both historically and as background for Catholic journalists working today,” Richert said.

The news release said there would be a “rebranding and a redesign of CatholicNews.com” but that the “tools that subscribers to CNS currently use will remain the same.”

It said it will provide national and international news, analysis, editorials, commentary and features and also would partner with the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication and with Aleteia, a Catholic website.

Without giving details, the release said it would “collaborate closely with an extensive network of Catholic diocesan publications to syndicate their content through OSV News” and said that subscription pricing would be announced in September.

Richert told National Catholic Reporter that OSV wants to hire about 10 new employees and some freelancers who would work remotely from a variety of locations. He also said the service plans to provide content in Spanish.

An OSV editorial published online July 6 said: “The church in the United States needs a Catholic news agency that is trusted by the faithful. The church in the rest of the world needs national Catholic news from the United States.”

It pointed out that the announcement of the closure of CNS’s domestic operations “felt like the final nail in the coffin of dozens of diocesan publications, and perhaps some national ones as well.”

“We could not let that happen. For our own publication, with a few strategic hires and a slight change in content, Our Sunday Visitor likely could have survived in a post-CNS world. But there is more to the Catholic press than one publication,” said the editorial, written by the OSV’s editorial board.

It stressed that OSV News would not just be the publishing company’s latest “product offering” but would be a “concrete symbol of our commitment to collaborate with our fellow members of the Catholic press to bring about a new renaissance in Catholic media — and a brighter future for the Catholic Church in the United States and beyond.”

The morning after Richert’s announcement, the CMA was holding a previously scheduled “CNS roundtable discussion” to discuss challenges and concerns for U.S. Catholic publications with the closing of CNS, led by members of an ad-hoc committee formed by the association in the wake of the announcement that CNS domestic operations would cease at year’s end.

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Follow Zimmermann on Twitter: @carolmaczim.

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