Crisis magazine folding after current issue

  • Thread starter Thread starter rien
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
R

rien

Guest
The editorial in the July/August Crisis announces the magazine will cease publication with the September issue. Increasing postal costs, declining readership are offered as some of the reasons for the end of Crisis.

The Morley Institute website will continue to have a Crisis section with articles, commentaries and a blog.

Sursum Corde, Envoy. It seems orthodox Catholic magazines are having a rough go.

Is there a similar situation of losr readership/vibablity with evangelical magazines? I realize the magazine/paper business is in trouble. It seems to be hitting most hard with orthodox catholic publications. Part of that is JW’s and LDS as a rule subscribe to their faith’s publications period. I don’t know if a valid comparison can be made there.

Don’t know the break even point for magazine subscriptions. But most Catholic magazines are under 20,000 subscriptions. Some a lot under. I beleive America may have the largest subscription base and is over 20,000. Evangelical publications like Chritianity Today are more robust by quite a bit. I think evangelicals subscribe less out of rote than do JW’s and LDS.

I’d love to see stats on Christian (evangelical and Catholic) publications as to paid subscriptions. If anyone knows please post. I am guessing, but This Rock is around 16,000 - 18,000.
 
rien said:
The editorial in the July/August Crisis announces the magazine will cease publication with the September issue. Increasing postal costs, declining readership are offered as some of the reasons for the end of Crisis.

The Morley institute website will continue to have a Crisi section with articles, commentaries and a blog.

Sursum Corde, Envoy. It seems orthodox Catholic magazines are having a rough go.

Is there a similar situation of losr readership/vibablity with evangelical magazines? I realize the magazine/paper business is in trouble. It seems to be hitting most hard with orthodox catholic publications.

Don’t know the break even point for magazine subscriptions. But most Catholic magazines are under 20,000 subscriptions. Some a lot under. I beleive America may have the largest subscription base and is over 20,000. Evangelical publications like Chritianity Today are more robust by quite a bit. I don’t know if evangelicals just like to read magazines more or subscribe out of a sense of “tithing”.

I’d love to see stats on Christian (evangelical and Catholic) publications as to paid subscriptions. If anyone knows please post. I am guessing, but This Rock is around 16,000 - 18,000.
Click to expand...
Well, I heard on Catholic radio that Envoy Magazine is back.
 
I used to subscribe to Crisis, but let the subscription drop a few years back. I always apprecaited their culture & arts stuff. I sincerely do hope that they leave their website of archived issues and articles up and running.

I used to find the magazine thoughtful and offering of a certain balance in perspective, challenging one to think. However, it eventually seemed to just run harder to the right. This is what it seemed the people behind it at Morley wanted, but I’m not sure that it could be hard enough right to please some, while going further into conservative politics and Catholicism probably didn’t garner it any additional readers of real thought, and certainly not enough readers of their preferred perspective to truly support subscription levels needed. They were always running some sort of promotional cut rate thing to get you back in, and ever since Deal Hudson left their email thoughts from the editor became rare.

I dropped my subscription a few years ago, however. The magazine was no longer providing the kind of thoughtfulness which I considered it to once have done. While it still had some real value, it was largely just becoming more of an agenda based promotional vehicle. I wasn’t going to waste my money on that, especially considering that I could eventually get anything of real worth which they put out on the web site. Plus the internet was becoming more interesting of a place to have valuable discussions of worth and I didn’t have the time to read the publication as extensively as I once did.

Still, if Deal Hudson were truly in charge again, it might return to something of greater worth. But, then, it is hard to find the kind of popular “Politics, Culture, and Church” type readers who are truly interested in that kind of a journal on the more popular level of interest, yet with some real intelectualism, nowadays; which is what they were trying to provide and foster. It’s a reflection upon the wider culture, ultimately, and sadly.
 
chicago said:
I used to subscribe to Crisis, but let the subscription drop a few years back. I always apprecaited their culture & arts stuff. I sincerely do hope that they leave their website of archived issues and articles up and running.

I used to find the magazine thoughtful and offering of a certain balance in perspective, challenging one to think. However, it eventually seemed to just run harder to the right. This is what it seemed the people behind it at Morley wanted, but I’m not sure that it could be hard enough right to please some, while going further into conservative politics and Catholicism probably didn’t garner it any additional readers of real thought, and certainly not enough readers of their preferred perspective to truly support subscription levels needed. They were always running some sort of promotional cut rate thing to get you back in, and ever since Deal Hudson left their email thoughts from the editor became rare.

I dropped my subscription a few years ago, however. The magazine was no longer providing the kind of thoughtfulness which I considered it to once have done. While it still had some real value, it was largely just becoming more of an agenda based promotional vehicle. I wasn’t going to waste my money on that, especially considering that I could eventually get anything of real worth which they put out on the web site. Plus the internet was becoming more interesting of a place to have valuable discussions of worth and I didn’t have the time to read the publication as extensively as I once did.

Still, if Deal Hudson were truly in charge again, it might return to something of greater worth. But, then, it is hard to find the kind of popular “Politics, Culture, and Church” type readers who are truly interested in that kind of a journal on the more popular level of interest, yet with some real intelectualism, nowadays; which is what they were trying to provide and foster. It’s a reflection upon the wider culture, ultimately, and sadly.
Click to expand...
IMO it became a vehicle for neo-cons and not Catholicism. As in their totally unabashed front and center support for a war in Iraq that thas destroyed the Eastern Rite Catholic (Chaldean) commuity there.
 
chicago said:
I used to subscribe to Crisis, but let the subscription drop a few years back. I always apprecaited their culture & arts stuff. …
I used to find the magazine thoughtful and offering of a certain balance in perspective, challenging one to think. However, it eventually seemed to just run harder to the right. …
it was largely just becoming more of an agenda based promotional vehicle. I wasn’t going to waste my money on that,
Click to expand...
rien said:
IMO it became a vehicle for neo-cons and not Catholicism.
Click to expand...
I too was a subscriber and took advantage of their promotions ($10 subscription) once they started them. But it too seemed to me that Catholicism just became a front and only pandered to it when it was convenient and explained it away when it wasn’t. When I dropped my sub I wrote an email to the editor who had taken over the eletters. He sent me a very thoughtful reply - he said that while he didn’t think I was correct in my assessment of where the mag was going, that he appreciated my letter because many times people just let their subscription drop and the mag has no idea why.
 
rien said:
IMO it became a vehicle for neo-cons and not Catholicism. As in their totally unabashed front and center support for a war in Iraq that thas destroyed the Eastern Rite Catholic (Chaldean) commuity there.
Click to expand...
That’s exactly what I found. It can be interesting to note that such and such a party’s policies are not morally licit, as long as the emphasis is on morality, and not on politics. But Crisis had become just a political rag – and for a Canadian, a very expensive and irrelevant one. Even in the US, I highly doubt that defending the faith is equivalent to damning the Democrats and/or raving about Republicans.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
Crisis is not folding. It is going internet only, and free.

They say that publications and mailing costs are way up.

So, presumably, by going on-line only, they save more in costs than they lose in subscription revenue.

God Bless
 
Gerry_Hunter said:
But Crisis had become just a political rag – and for a Canadian, a very expensive and irrelevant one. Even in the US, I highly doubt that defending the faith is equivalent to damning the Democrats and/or raving about Republicans.
Click to expand...
I think this is a rather great exaggeration; there weren’t even all that many articles that dealt with issues on which the two parties had positions. They clearly were (or tried to be) orthodox and therefore anytime they included an article that dealt with (e.g.) abortion or fetal stem cell research it would inevitably put the Democrats in a bad light. I took that more as a reflection of the Democrats failure on the moral issues than a failure of Crisis to present the issues fairly.

Ender
 
I had a subscription, and there were some good items in the issues, but overall, it was so partisan that it was extremely irksome. So, I let the subscription lapse. There were other, better, less ranty sources of intellectual nurture for the faith.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
bilop said:
Crisis is not folding. It is going internet only, and free.

They say that publications and mailing costs are way up.

So, presumably, by going on-line only, they save more in costs than they lose in subscription revenue.

God Bless
Click to expand...
How will that affect their budget and ability to publish online while paying, I assume, their journalists/columnists? To what extent will they remain viable?
 
chicago said:
How will that affect their budget and ability to publish online while paying, I assume, their journalists/columnists? To what extent will they remain viable?
Click to expand...
As log as the Morley Institue wants to fund its “Crisi section” on their website it will stay up. In an of itself i don’t see how it can/could be viable.
 
Dandelion_Wine said:
I too was a subscriber and took advantage of their promotions ($10 subscription) once they started them. But it too seemed to me that Catholicism just became a front and only pandered to it when it was convenient and explained it away when it wasn’t. When I dropped my sub I wrote an email to the editor who had taken over the eletters. He sent me a very thoughtful reply - he said that while he didn’t think I was correct in my assessment of where the mag was going, that he appreciated my letter because many times people just let their subscription drop and the mag has no idea why.
Click to expand...
Its interesting. I don’t recall a single article in Crisis on the crisis in the Chaldean Catholic community in Iraq. Of course you won’t read such things in evangelical publications either. Chronicles magazine, a radical conservative, non-neo, non religious magazine has been pleading about the plight of the Chaldeans for years. Their curent issue has a great article on the silence of the White House on the decimation of the Iraqi Chrisitan community over the past 3 years plus. It, the article, also takes a swipe at evangelical Christians for enthusiastically supporting the war and being blind to the destruction of Christianity in the land of Ur.

Its a great article. Wish I had a scanner. Called ‘Children of a Lesser God’ one quote:

“Nearly every report on [us] soldiers and their families refers to their unswerving faith in God sustaining them in their missions and if they become casualties, belief they are now with their Maker. Are Iraqi Christians , established in Iraq since the time of Christ, children of a lesser God?” That by journalist Felictiy Arbuthnot.

Very powerful and pro-Chrsitian/Catholic article on the plight of Iraqi Chaldeans. From a secular magazine. Maybe if Crisis had been more balanced and less secular - they were supposed to be quasi catholic - things would have turned out differently.
 
rien said:
Maybe if Crisis had been more balanced and less secular - they were supposed to be quasi catholic - things would have turned out differently.
Click to expand...
Conservative Crisis is folding while Liberal Commonweal survives still (in an era where everyone suggests that the latter type of Catholic is greying and dying off). I’m not sure what this says. But it says something.
 
chicago said:
How will that affect their budget and ability to publish online while paying, I assume, their journalists/columnists? To what extent will they remain viable?
Click to expand...
I would imagine that they are doing it b/c it will make them more viable. Since their subscription rates ranged from $10-20 for 10(?) issues, I imagine subscriptions didn’t even cover the cost of physically producing and mailing the magazaine.

Now, with free distribution, they hope to increase their readership and rely on advertising.

It could work.

God Bless
 
Gerry_Hunter said:
That’s exactly what I found. It can be interesting to note that such and such a party’s policies are not morally licit, as long as the emphasis is on morality, and not on politics. But Crisis had become just a political rag – and for a Canadian, a very expensive and irrelevant one.** Even in the US, I highly doubt that defending the faith is equivalent to damning the Democrats and/or raving about Republicans.**

Blessings,

Gerry
Click to expand...
Unfortunatley given the Democrats partys rejection of nearly everything the Church teaches on Morality that is exactly the case.
 
Wasn’t it Crisis magazine that criticized Michael Rose’s book “Goodbye good men” that exposed the myth of the Priesthood shortage??
 
chicago said:
Conservative Crisis is folding while Liberal Commonweal survives still (in an era where everyone suggests that the latter type of Catholic is greying and dying off). I’m not sure what this says. But it says something.
Click to expand...
Perhaps that, when it comes to publishing a viable magazine, there’s more to it that being just liberal or conservative?

I know that I can get more out of a well argued and well presented article that takes a position I cannot support than an emotional, ranty piece that takes a position I can support. I’m a subscriber, and avid reader, of First Things, in spite of the fact that I find myself taking issue with some of its political assertions. (This magazine is, of course, specifically concerned with religion in public life.) But I am not turned off because I find the content informative and well presented, even though I do not agree with some of the conclusions.

It’s a bit like singing praises. Even if they are offered to one who is truly praiseworthy, I don’t want to hear them if the offerer simply can’t sing.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top