A couple of readers have written to ask us to move the Faith & Values section, published Saturdays, in front of an automotive advertising section that currently is positioned in front of the Faith section. They want to know why a news section would be placed behind advertising, and wonder what message it sends about how we prioritize faith news.
I think it sends a very strong message that The Eagle publishes a section with faith news, and devotes the front of a section to it. Last week I was looking at several newspapers from larger cities, and they all gave faith news a single page (or three-fourths of a page) inside an entertainment section, or on the back page of the section. One reader wanted us to remove entertainment news from the back of the Faith section, feeling that it devalued the religion stories.
I don’t see it that way. Entertainment is an important topic for thousands of our readers on the weekend, and that content is important to help people plan their free time. We chose to make faith stories a higher priority and give them a more prominent position. I think that speaks volumes about our priorities.
The section is behind the automotive advertising for a key reason – advertisers pay most of the newspaper’s costs for gathering and printing news, including for a prominent position such as the automotive section. Without those advertisers, we wouldn’t be able to offer the range of content we do on Saturday: news, sports, home and garden features, religion, and entertainment.
We have to find a balance of meeting the needs of readers and advertisers both. In addition, automotive advertising is very popular with readers, especially on Saturday. Faith & Values is right behind that section, so it shouldn’t be very hard to locate. Nor should our priorities for topics we consider important to cover.
2 Comments
Sherri, I appreciate your commitment to news from and about the faith community. The fact that is it so consistently placed has a much higher value to me than where it lands. I do worry that because it is inside the auto ad wrapper, that the casual reader might not even get to that section, thinking it was all ad content. We appreciate the great job that Joe does, week in, week out covering one of the most multi-faceted beats in our community.
Kirk Longhofer
Director, Communications and Technology
First United Methodist Church
I appreciate the faith section of the Eagle. The Mystery Visitor adds so much to help us look at other congregations and ourselves. It causes discussion in our churches and re-motivates us to welcome visitors. I realize that subscriptions only pay a small portion of the cost to publish the newspaper and I am grateful for the advertisers and the readers that make print advertising effective.
Having the Faith section behind the automotive advs causes me to also go into the classifieds which I normally did not do.