When the Boston Globe hired John Allen away from the National Catholic Reporter earlier this year, it didn't make sense. The Globe had closed its overseas bureaus years ago and—like every other newspaper in the country—had a shrinking newsroom.
With the launch this week of Crux ("Covering All Things Catholic") as the Globe's newest website, hiring the man George Weigel once called "“the best Anglophone Vatican reporter ever" makes sense—not as a newspaper strategy but as an online media strategy.
New Globe owner John Henry (also principal owner of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club) made his fortune crunching numbers, analyzing data, and trading on the commodities futures markets. According to newsroom sources, the numbers Henry has crunched persuad him there's an unmet demand for coverage of the Catholic Church; and that the Globe—with its long history as paper of record in one of the most Catholic metropolitan regions in the country—is well-positioned to capture a profit-making share of that market.
Crux launched with a small staff: Globe veteran (and former Boston.com editor) Teresa Hanafin edits the site, with Allen as her associate editor. Inés San Martín and Michael O'Loughling are the Vatican and US reporters, respectively. Longtime Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan was hired away to write a column on spirituality; and Christina Reinwald is Crux's web producer. At least for now, the site is fleshed out with stories from the wires: AP, Catholic News Service, and Religion News Service.
Allen's column earlier this week was titled "Getting to the Crux of why Catholicisim Matters". In it—after citing current news stories from the US, Phillipines, India, South Sudan and Lebanon—he wrote, "In the abstract, some may wonder why a secular news organization would launch a site dedicated to the church. As the examples above illustrate, the real journalistic question is, “Why not?” You don’t have to be Catholic, you don’t even have to be religious, to see the logic of it — all you have to do is pay attention."
Only time will tell whether Crux succeeds in the rapidly changing business climate affecting all journalistic ventures. For now, it's nice to see a news outlet expanding, rather than cutting, its coverage of the Church.
