Budget cuts and potential layoffs could forever change official Vatican media

Inside one of the Rome studios of Radio Vaticana, the official radio station of the Holy See, which celebrates its 90th birthday this year. Photo via the Vatican press office.

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(OPINION) The year was 2012 and then-Pope Benedict XVI, yearning to “encounter men and women wherever they are, and begin dialogue with them” sent out his first tweet. The papal Twitter account in English — and associated accounts in different languages — continues to this day under Pope Francis. For the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics, it remains a way to evangelize through the computer, especially during the pandemic. 

It did not go unnoticed when Francis — paying a visit on May 24 to the Dicastery of Communications to mark the 90th anniversary of Vatican Radio and the 160th anniversary of the Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano — used the occasion to call the Vatican’s in-house media to stay relevant during a challenging media landscape.

The Associated Press, in its news story, noted the following:

Francis has vowed not to fire anyone to offset the economic crisis created by COVID-19 and the pandemic-related shuttering of one of the Holy See’s main sources of revenue, ticket sales from the Vatican Museums.

But in a warning of sorts to the Vatican communications staff, he opened his unscripted remarks Monday with a pointed question.

“There are a lot of reasons to be worried about the Radio, L’Osservatore, but one that touches my heart: How many people listen to the Radio? How many people read L’Osservatore Romano?” Francis asked.

He said their work was good, their offices nice and organized, but that there was a “danger” that their work doesn’t arrive where it is supposed to. He warned them against falling prey to a “lethal” functionality where they go through the motions but don’t actually achieve anything.

In dealing with Vatican-run media, journalists need to ask several questions:

— Why has Pope Francis questioned his own media?

— Like former President Donald Trump, does Francis believe social media is cheaper and more pervasive way to spread his message?

— Does Francis believe the mainstream press does a good enough job covering him?

The pope’s remarks, and his threats of layoffs, are no different than the media titans who run mainstream news outlets. While the internet has made news more ubiquitous, it has also cheapened it. People aren’t willing to pay for it. It has become more partisan. It’s also being produced in larger quantities now that the news cycle never stops.

The Vatican isn’t concerned about making money, but it does cost money to produce content for newspapers, radio and internet. While it remains essential for the church to promote its message, how they do it going forward may need to change. After all, even the Vatican has bills to pay. Even among the Catholics reading this now, how many of you read the Vatican’s newspaper? Its online portal Vatican News? Or even listen to their radio station?

I must confess that I do, but on a very limited basis. In the United States, readers and viewers are blessed with a very large media eco-system, including a growing number of independent Catholic publications of various kinds (click here for recent post on The Pillar). It’s the same media that Pope Francis has sometimes railed against when talk of a schism has come up at news conferences aboard the papal plane.

The Vatican’s media serves as a primary source for journalists covering Catholicism and Vatican observers. It helps deliver the official papal line at a time when cardinals and bishops often disagree or interpret the pope’s words in different ways. It can offer clarity, although it often does not.

It’s noteworthy that the pope did not talk about social media, which certainly requires people to run, but isn’t too expensive to operate. Just ask Trump about that, at least until he was recently de-platformed by Facebook and Twitter. Should the pope be worried about the same thing? It’s certainly a possibility. Unlike Trump, the pope isn’t on his phone tweeting all day. Instead, the Vatican press office, with his approval, churns out tweets all day.

Of course, the pope’s social media channels have gotten in trouble before — like the time someone linked to the pope’s Instagram account “liked” a photo of a scantily-clad Brazilian model.

The pope’s social media accounts remain very popular, but his other media properties? Not so much. A little digging and some use of analytics, the type all newsrooms use these days, reveals some issues. Like Trump’s failed media platform, Francis will certainly need to re-evaluate the Vatican’s media offerings.

For example, the English-language version of Vatican News (which can be found at www.vaticannews.va) ranks 7,199th globally as of last month, according to Similarweb, a web traffic analysis firm. It has had 11.3 million visits over the span of the last six months.

By comparison, The New York Times ranks 126th, using the same metric, with 362.7 million visits.

Let’s look at L’Osservatore Romano. The weekly English edition (which can be found at www.osservatoreromano.va/en.html) ranks 206,001st globally. It has had 228,800 visits.

These numbers are a mixed bag. Clearly, the pope has a point when questioning who is reading the Vatican’s content. The key question: Who’s the audience for this media? The bigger point is that the internet has disrupted the business model, even for a place like the Vatican, and new ideas need to take shape.  

L’Osservatore Romano, back in 2010, was described as “first and foremost, a sort of papal fanzine” by Slate. Pope Francis has jokingly called it “the party newspaper.” In 2007, the paper went through a reboot, including movie reviews and connecting the church to pop culture. Nonetheless, it’s something that fewer and fewer people are reading — especially when you look at the daily edition that’s published in Italian and sold predominantly in Rome.

The newspaper’s main function has been to get out the pope’s message, as well as the Vatican’s take, on issues as close to home like Italian affairs and one further away involving the church’s role in affairs around the globe. The point of the newspaper is to influence others since mainstream news coverage can’t be relied upon to get that message out. Even a mainstream press that tends to give Pope Francis favorable coverage, especially in the West, the Vatican is fully aware that a secular press can’t fill that role.

Many don’t see the pope as a CEO, but he is when it comes to the Vatican’s finances. The Holy See is going through a tough economic time (thanks to the ongoing Vatican Bank scandals), but it’s their media outreach that could see major changes going forward. It’s something journalists need to keep an eye on — and something that hits home for so many in the news business having to deal with layoffs and budget cuts in the internet age.

This post originally appeared at GetReligion.