What is news?
It’s the key question editors and reporters continuously ask themselves when approaching and covering a major event.
Days before a pre-scheduled event or meeting like a political convention or the Super Bowl, these same people working in newsrooms prepare for what they can expect — although much of journalism deals with the unexpected such as a scandal, a crime or natural disaster.
Reporters are not in the seeing-the-future business — but there are storylines that they look for ahead of a pre-arranged event.
One such event will be the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops annual fall meeting in Baltimore (the first in-person assembly since the pandemic struck in March 2020) that started Monday and runs through Thursday. What used to be largely overlooked week by mainstream news organizations, the meeting has been catapulted into the spotlight in recent years for several reasons.
Many prominent Catholic bishops have become increasingly vocal in the ongoing culture wars and that’s drawn more media attention. At the same time, American Catholics have increasingly become split along political and doctrinal lines on issues such as abortion during the trump years. Last year’s election of Joe Biden, the first Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, and his open advocacy of pro-abortion policies.
Thus, the USCCB meeting has become a news even that now lives outside the Catholic media ecosystem. Alas, there may even be political-desk reporters covering this event.
The main storyline since the 2020 election season has been the ongoing argument over whether Catholic politicians who openly advocate for abortion are in direct conflict with church teachings and therefore should not receive Holy Communion.
