Catholic World News is dead. Long live Catholic World News… as the all new Catholic Culture project! A couple of years ago Trinity Communications, the company behind Catholic Culture—and longtime provider of CWN’s technical infrastructure—purchased Catholic World News from Philip Lawler, editor and publisher. And now, they’re taking CWN to the next level by incorporating it into Catholic Culture.
This has particular significance for me since I was there at the beginning of CWN and worked alongside Phil for 9 years. I even created the first iteration of CWN’s web site back in 1997! But now CWN is no more, except as a header for a section on the Catholic Culture site.
But that’s okay, because the new Catholic Culture site is great! Phil and Trinity have taken the best part of CWN—the insightful and knowledgeable commentary—and expanded it while preserving the parts no one else was doing as well, including breaking Catholic news and providing links to the breadth and depth of coverage of issues and news of interest to Catholics.
Under the News section are Feature Stories, which is the original reporting CWN is known for, and NewsPlus Stories (the old “NewsBytes”), now with added commentary to give context for other media outlets’ coverage. Under Commentary, you’ll find commentary and analysis by Phil, Jeff Mirus, and others; the Catholic Culture blog, where Phil and Jeff write brief bits; Off the Record, where our old friend Diogenes continues to hold court; Catholic Culture Insights, the archives of Jeff’s weekly email newsletter; Letters to the Editor; and Sound Off, which is the combox for the various articles. The Culture section holds most of what was the old Catholic Culture site, including reviews, information on the liturgical year, the text of the Catechism, the Catholic dictionary, and so on. Best of all there are a bunch of new RSS feeds for keeping track of all this great information.
Keep in mind that the site is still in beta, so there will be occasional glitches, but I’m excited by the promise we see here. Oh, and did I mention that the former pay service is now free, although they are now donor supported. Which means you better feel a moral obligation to support this excellent apostolate if you receive benefit from it, just as much as you would if it were still a mandatory subscription.
I’m happy to see CWN grow and expand into a whole new and promising form of Catholic news and analysis site. Bravo to Phil, Jeff, Peter, and the whole gang at Trinity!
Good news. Been a long admirer of both sites so this is cool.