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Telling "our" Good News Through the Media!
by Ronald Landfair
A cursory review of the magazine(s) can easily acquaint one with the
preferred writing styles of the publication, and the editors are often
only too happy to accommodate requests for writers' guidelines for
publication. While writing primarily for our own award-winning faith
Magazine, I have submitted pieces to many Catholic outlets (including our
local diocesan newspaper, a Catholic New Services (CNS) affiliate. While I
am quite proud to have been published in America Magazine each year for
the last four years-I have had many more pieces rejected far more often.
How many of us submit works to America Magazine, US Catholic magazine,
Commonweal, The Catholic Digest, or the Catholic News Service? Such
rejections do not deter me, they only serve to make me sharpen and focus
my craft work even more so. It is the lot of the writer. It is the new and
as yet, largely untapped media mine of Black Catholicism.
A secondary glance at the field of television reveals much of the same
lack of presence that Bishop Povish spoke about. The greatest untapped
market for Catholic television presence is in the area of local cable
access. Every local cable system, because of their operating agreements
with local governments are required by law to provide opportunities for
free local cable access programming to the larger community. A cursory
review of your own local cable access offerings will usually reveal a
decided absence of programming oriented towards the Catholic viewer.
Programs articulating a fundamentalist, Protestant "Bible-only" view are
far more the norm, as is programming centered in the Black Christian (but
not Catholic) view. Many storefront churches use a weekly television
platform to display themselves and their various ministries far more
effectively than the Catholic church has ever done! It is not some vast
conspiracy or secret as to how they have gained such access-they merely
attend the required training schemes that provide education and overviews
with regard to using the local cable station resources and equipment and
they are up and running in no time! Introduced to the arena by a Black
Baptist minister friend (who currently has three shows airing at various
times on local public cable access!), I now enjoy hosting a monthly talk
show that has for the last eighteen months focused attention on the
various ministries within our diocesan framework-from Vocations to
Hispanic and Migrant Ministry. Imagine the programming possibilities if
local dioceses or even individual directors were to make use such
resources! The possibilities are limited only by our own imagination!
Towards that end (working in conjunction with one of our local diocesan
high schools), in the fall of 2004, the Diocese of Lansing will be
offering a "High School Media Program" that will utilize local public
cable access platforms along with Catholic media professionals in offering
a semester long guest lecture series that will focus on the various roles
and types of media platforms and careers that are possible. Never in our
diocesan history has there been such a deliberate and intentional focus to
raise up the next generation of Catholic writers, media professionals,
directors, broadcasters etc. by giving them opportunities now, to explore
and be exposed to careers in broadcast and print journalism and media. I
suspect that is true for most (if not all of the local US church as well).
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