The Ottawa Citizen mixes  the sacred and the secular

Citizen mixes sacred and secular

Once relegated to the "religion page ghetto," faith issues have moved into the paper's news line-up. Bob Harvey, the one who edited that section for seven years, couldn't be happier.  By Bob Harvey, from the Spring, 1998 issue of Media Magazine, the official publication of the Canadian Association of Journalists A year ago, the Ottawa Citizen introduced what publisher Russ Mills called the "most extensive editorial changes in the newspaper's 152 year history. "  There was a new typeface, a new masthead (which included the Peace Tower), a new weekly Sunday magazine, two pages for letters to the editor, more space for local news, expanded business coverage, and new pages for editorial comment and analysis.

But what's the most successful part of this $2 million experiment? Reynolds says it is the increased coverage of religion.

An almost unnoticed part of the changes in the bold new Citizen was the elimination of our weekly religion and ethics page, over which I had labored for seven years. When he told me the page was to be cut, Reynolds said he believed in a mix of the sacred and secular throughout the daily pages, and that I would soon be on the front page instead of relegated to the religion page ghetto.

He lived up to his word. In the first nine months of the new Citizen, I had 45 front-page bylines, as compared to five in all of 1996. And I wasn't the only one on the front page with religion and ethics stories. Some days we now have three or four reporters working on religion and ethics stories. The Citizen is publishing more religion and ethics stories than anyone else in the country and, for the first time, we're willing to send reporters to Washington, San Francisco and Holland to cover everything from Billy Graham to euthanasia.

"Of all the things we hoped we could do, this experiment has worked the best of any, "says Reynolds. He says the change in religion and ethics coverage is what he hears most about from readers. "They're just thrilled to see religion on the front page. It has wounded people that their newspaper would not deal with religion on a news basis. Editors had become embarrassed by faith, and by people who still believed."

Perhaps the best example of The Citizen's new emphasis is the controversy ignited by our coverage of the United Church's moderator, Rev. Bill Phipps. He is one of the few religious leaders I know who sought an invitation to talk to our editorial board. (He may also be the last.) When our editorial writers quizzed him in October not only about economics and his social justice activism, but also about his theological orthodoxy, he told us "Jesus was not God" and that he personally doubted the physical reality of Jesus's resurrection. My story hit our front page the next day, and quickly became hot news across the country.

As Phipps repeated his comments on radio and television, many United Church clergy and congregations demanded his resignation. Others applauded his courage and free thinking. It was probably the country's biggest religion news story of the year and, like many of our front-page religion stories in the past year, it ignited a long and passionate debate in the letters to the editor columns.

This emphasis on religion and ethics is not new for Reynolds, a maverick among Canadian newspaper editors. As the long-time editor of the Kingston Whig-Standard, he once experimented with a 12-page weekly religion section. In it he wrote an opinion piece, suggesting that John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was a more important historical figure than Karl Marx. He argues that Wesley had more effect on the lives of ordinary people, because of the impact of such memorable slogans as "cleanliness is next to godliness" and "earn more, save more, give more". That emphasis on religion and ethics simply continued when Reynolds moved to the Telegraph-Journal in Saint John., N.B., and then to The Citizen.

Reynolds is the son of a district superintendent in the Free Methodist Church, the late Rev. Clarke Reynolds, but says that like society itself, he has drifted away from church. Nevertheless, he sees the daily newspaper "as the parable of our day, the accumulating gospel of our times."

To him, every story has a moral dimension, whether it be sports, entertainment, or crime. "If you look at a newspaper and read the headlines, nine times out of 10, the moral dynamic of the story is obvious."

Reynolds argues that a religion and ethics beat is essential because it allows a newspaper to explicitly address the questions underlying the rest of its stories.

Few Canadian newspaper editors agree with Reynolds. The Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Hamilton Spectator, and the Ottawa Citizen are probably the only dailies with full-time writers specializing in religion and ethics.

One of the few high-profile journalists who has spoken out about the dismal coverage of religion and ethics by North American media is Peter Jennings, the Ottawa-born anchor of ABC Television News. He was instrumental in the decision by ABC to hire the American network's first religion correspondent, Peggy Wehmeyer, in 1995.

In a speech to the Harvard Divinity School later that same year, Jennings said "I have only recently come to understand how complicated and inadequate, and occasionally horrifying, media coverage of religion has been . . . It is ludicrous that we are the only national television network to have a full-time religion reporter who is a specialist."

Bob Harvey is the religion and ethics editor of the Ottawa Citizen.

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