The Catholic press — in print, online and television — is one of the most active and vibrant sources of news about trends and current events in U.S. Catholic life and the Catholic world as a whole.

It is often well-funded and essential to understanding Catholicism, but the changing journalism landscape — spurred on by the Internet — has made it tough for religious media to thrive, even if they have large and loyal audiences.

But, as we are seeing in the news market as a whole, readers are becoming more and more loyal to news sources with strong editorial points of view linked to the wide rifts in American Catholicism. This makes it hard for journalists to speak to readers on both sides.

This trend manifested itself recently with the pending closures of two highly venerated and popular Catholic news organizations: Catholic News Service and Catholic New York.

Catholic New York was one of those publications that used CNS stories. That’s one thing that connected the two. The other was that both news organizations were run by the church hierarchy.

CNS, founded in 1920, is a wire service with reporters and editors that write up stories for subscriber newspapers across the country. The other, Catholic New York, was the official newspaper of the archdiocese and one of the largest of its kind in the country in terms of geographical reach and circulation.

CNS announced two weeks ago that it was shutting down a main part of its operation in “a dramatic reorganization of its communications department” — including the closure of the Washington, D.C., and New York offices.

In meetings with newsroom staff, James Rogers, the chief communications officer of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the Washington office would be closed at year’s end. The Rome bureau will remain open and continue to report on the Vatican.