Changes to the IC

Friday, Jan. 29, 2016

As you’ve probably noticed, starting with this issue, the Intermountain Catholic has given a few regular features a new home in these pages: the Around the Diocese calendar has moved to the inside back page, the local columns (including this one) now are located on the page that faces the inside back page, and the Year of Mercy reflection has been moved to page 3.

I’m always looking to improve the Intermountain Catholic, and these changes are intended to give a more seamless flow to the news. To me, it makes more sense to have the local and national opinion columns on back-to-back pages rather than on pages 3 and 13, as we did in the past.

For this to occur, we needed to move the Around the Diocese. Previously, we had kept the inside back page open in case we had a spot-color ad, but that’s no longer necessary because we now have full color on all pages, thanks to our printer, Transcript Bulletin Publishing, so  Around the Diocese could go there.

As for the Year of Mercy, I originally toyed with trying to put it on the local opinions page, but it just wouldn’t fit on those weeks when Msgr. Mannion, Jean Hill and I all have columns scheduled. I did want to give it a permanent home, not place it where space was available each week, and the only other consistent page that filled that requirement was page 3, so that’s where it can be found from now on.

We’ve also discontinued the monthly “Parlez du Café” feature. It was intended to serve as a way for parishioners throughout the diocese to let others know of significant personal news such as anniversaries or awards, but that never caught on; almost all of the information we got was for students from the Catholic schools. I’d still like to do some sort of “chatty news” column, for lack of a better term, but for now that’s on hold. We’ll continue to post the student news, probably once a month on the schools page. 

Another change that I hope will begin shortly is more diocesan from outside the Salt Lake City area. In the six years that I’ve been editor, I’ve struggled to get news coverage of the parishes and missions to the north, south, east and west. I get complaints – quite valid ones – that the Intermountain Catholic doesn’t include news of these parishes.

To address this complaint, I’ve asked parishioners at those parishes to submit news items and photos, but that wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped. Quite honestly, it put an unrealistic burden on them, so I understand why it didn’t work. On the other hand, it’s cost-prohibitive to have my staff travel the three or four hours (one way) to Moab, Cedar City or Logan on a regular basis.

The problem has remained, and now I think I have a solution. Because of some recent staff changes, I’ve received permission to seek freelance writers to provide stories from the more distant parishes. I’m working to contract with freelancers now. If you know of anyone who might be interested in writing for the Intermountain Catholic in areas outside the Salt Lake Valley, please have them contact me.  As long as they meet the requirements described above, I don’t care if they’re college students, retirees or professional freelance writers. I will ask for writing samples, however.

I can be reached at marie@icatholic.org.