New Orleans Archdiocese Administration offices on Walmsley Ave. in New Orleans, La. Friday, Nov. 2, 2018.
Peter Finney Jr.
The Clarion Herald honors the late Auxiliary Bishop Fernand Cheri at the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Saturday, April 1, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
About sixty parishioners attend Mass at St. James Major Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans, Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. (Photo by Scott Threlkeld, The Times-Picayune)
Three generations of Peter Finneys: Pete Finney, left, famous Times-Picayune sports columnist, left, his son, Peter Finney, Jr., center, and grandson, Peter Finney III. Peter Finney is honored as the 24th Joe Gemelli Fleur de Lis Award recipient for his contributions to the New Orleans Saints organization, journalism and the community during the 25th annual Saints Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in the Grand Ballroom at the Airport Hilton in Kenner Friday, November 15, 2013.
New Orleans Archdiocese Administration offices on Walmsley Ave. in New Orleans, La. Friday, Nov. 2, 2018.
After 63 years of bringing news and feature stories about the local Roman Catholic church to the city’s faithful, The Clarion Herald will cease publication in its current form at the end of June.
The move comes after a committee of local church pastors voted last summer to eliminate two main sources of funding for the newspaper, both of which come directly from parish coffers: 1% of weekly collections and a $15 fee assessed each Catholic school family.
The Clarion Herald honors the late Auxiliary Bishop Fernand Cheri at the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Saturday, April 1, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Together, those sources make up about half of The Clarion Herald’s $1 million annual budget. Without those funds the paper, which has a circulation of 37,000, can no longer afford to continue as a biweekly newspaper, longtime editor Peter Finney, Jr. said recently.
Instead, the publication, which is an independent affiliate of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, will be taken over by the archdiocese and run by its communications department.
Archdiocese spokesperson Sarah McDonald said she has spent the past few months re-imagining The Clarion Herald. She said she hopes to come up with a lower-cost model that will keep it alive, albeit in a new format. Potential options include going entirely online, further reducing the print schedule to monthly or quarterly or partnering with other publications, among other possibilities.
“All options are on the table but we are not doing away with it completely,” McDonald said. “It is just going to transform.”
Finney, 68, who has served as editor and general manager for more than three decades, will retire when the last issue of The Clarion Herald in its current form is printed at the end of June.
Peter Finney Jr.
“I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of years, even before the financial challenges, and I think it was just time,” said Finney, who said he plans to spend time with his six grandchildren. “I hope they can develop a plan that can really serve peoples’ needs.”
The pending demise of The Clarion Herald is the latest sign of the financial pressure the nation’s second-oldest diocese faces nearly five years after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection amid a growing number of clergy sex abuse claims.
As the church tries to raise money to settle those claims, which will cost more than $100 million, it is shrinking its footprint by closing and consolidating parishes and selling off its nursing homes and surplus real estate.
Though The Clarion Herald is an independent affiliate of the archdiocese and therefore is not technically part of the bankruptcy case, half of its budget comes directly from the parishes. Also, like other church affiliates, it is controlled by Archbishop Gregory Aymond, the sole member of the nonprofit corporation that oversees the newspaper.
Concern about the financial pressures the parishes are already facing, and the likelihood they will be asked to contribute if and when the bankruptcy case is settled, prompted the two dozen pastors who make up the dioceses’ Presbyteral Council to vote last year to cease funding the paper.
About sixty parishioners attend Mass at St. James Major Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans, Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. (Photo by Scott Threlkeld, The Times-Picayune)
“With rising insurance costs and all the other expenses of running a parish, they got to the point where they felt this was money they could no longer afford to spend,” McDonald said.
She added, “the decision was independent of the bankruptcy.”
The Clarion Herald is the latest of countless print publications — both religious and secular — to downsize or shutter altogether over the past two decades as online content has largely replaced traditional newspapers and magazines.
Between 2006 and 2020, the number of Catholic newspapers in the U.S. declined nearly 40%, falling from 196 to 118, according to the Catholic Media Association. In the last three years alone, dioceses in Peoria, Ill., Green Bay, Wis., and New York City have done away with their newspapers.
The Clarion Herald has been battling cost pressures for years, amid declining print readership, waning church attendance and a shrinking population in New Orleans. After Katrina, the paper did away with mailing issues to readers’ homes. After COVID, it further reduced costs by going from a weekly to biweekly schedule.
Finney, who grew up in a newspaper family – his father was the beloved Times-Picayune sports writer and columnist, Pete Finney – has witnessed the changes to the industry since he began his career in the late 1970s. One of his first jobs was in New York with United Press International, a now-defunct wire service.
Three generations of Peter Finneys: Pete Finney, left, famous Times-Picayune sports columnist, left, his son, Peter Finney, Jr., center, and grandson, Peter Finney III. Peter Finney is honored as the 24th Joe Gemelli Fleur de Lis Award recipient for his contributions to the New Orleans Saints organization, journalism and the community during the 25th annual Saints Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in the Grand Ballroom at the Airport Hilton in Kenner Friday, November 15, 2013.
He went on to work as a sports writer for the New York Post and the New York Daily News before moving home in 1993 with his wife and their four children and taking the reins at The Clarion Herald.
“It’s really sort of a vocation,” said Finney, whose editorial philosophy is to highlight the ways the church is making a positive difference in peoples’ lives. “When you write something nice, it impacts people in such an important way.”
Over the past year, Finney and his staff spent months trying to raise money and cut costs.
Readers sent in donations — $5, $10, $100 checks — in hopes of saving the paper in its current form. But in the end, the $25,000 they raised was “eternally heart-warming but not enough to bridge the looming budget cuts,” Finney wrote in a recent column announcing his retirement.
The paper has enough money to continue publishing as normal for several months beyond July 1, but it makes more sense to use existing reserves to “give life to a future communications strategy,” he said.
“When that plan becomes more defined, we will let readers know,” Finney wrote. “In the end, God is in control.”
Email Stephanie Riegel at stephanie.riegel@theadvocate.com.
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