Does the Anglican Church of Canada deserve good journalism? Do they need it?

I’m a former editor of the Anglican Journal, one with a fraught and very public history with the church and some of its former leadership. I left the church after my own ordeal and no longer read the Journal.

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When I learned that the church voted last month to eliminate the Journal’s journalistic mandate and transform it into a public relations instrument, I felt little surprise. Church leadership had long struggled to manage a department dedicated to consistent and structured truth-telling. Sometimes it made the church look good, but sometimes it made the church look very bad indeed. I knew the church was ready to let journalism go.

And so my answer to the first question is no, Anglicans do not deserve good journalism. In fact, they decided as much on June 12 through their own democratic structures.

But deserving isn’t the same as needing, and ending your pursuit of truth doesn’t negate your obligation to it. These ideas raise different questions, ones that I believe every Christian should consider.

The Anglican Journal has produced award-winning and meaningful journalism, but it has come at a cost. When I took over the publication in 2019, something like 12 editors had served the Journal over the previous 20 years. My immediate predecessor lasted a month. In my experience, this is extremely unusual in ecclesial journalism; I’ve known editors who served the same publication for 30 years.

As I fell deeper into the role, I came to understand that the church had backed itself into a corner: the Journal had to be journalistic in order to access hundreds of thousands of dollars from the federal government. The Aid to Publishers grant, from the Department of Canadian Heritage, is designed to support production and distribution costs so Canadian journalism can still reach relevant audiences. You cannot produce a public relations rag and receive taxpayer money.

When I arrived, the grant money subsidized the costs of the Journal’s printing and distribution,........

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