Engaging Media

Many many blessings came to me during the days I worked in diocesan administration.  An unexpected one was learning to deal with the media.  Social concerns and clergy/ministerial issues touched the public, and were of interest to the newspapers.  In my position as that dreaded animal, a “diocesan official”, I found myself called by print reporters, and on occasion by radio or tv reporters.  The more interviews I did the more I became comfortable with them—learning what to say and what not to say.  I’ve even learned to do what I hate politicians do:  not answer the question asked but give what message you want to give.

(One year I was attending the annual Social Ministry Gathering sponsored by the U. S. Catholic bishops’s conference.  All the participants were lobbying the Congress for national legislation to end the use of the death penalty in federal cases.  The conference’s media director asked me to be interviewed on two radio station’s “live-line,” in Philadelphia (KYW) and Pittsburgh (KQV), to explain the church’s evolving teaching on capital punishment.  So early the next day I found myself being interviewed over the telephone from a hotel room in Washington, D.C., by a reporter in Philly and by veteran KQV staffer P.J. Maloney—while in my skivvies.  I’m glad we didn’t use videophones.)

These experiences have made me sensitive to the value (and pitfalls) of talking with what Sarah Palin calls the “lamestream media.”   When a reporter calls me, I answer the call.  I don’t seek the publicity, but if I’m asked about something that promotes the church, I reply.  The media outlets reach far beyond the parish bulletin.

(In 2005 when I was pastor of St. John Vianney Parish, in the Hilltop communities of Pittsburgh, we were completing a 2 ½ year process of closing three churches.  KDKA-TV called and wanted to speak with me.  So reporter Kristine Sorensen interviewed me in St. George (soon to be St. John Vianney) Church.  She asked me why the parish is closing churches.  I gave the statistics on the steep decline of number of parishioners and thereby steep decline in offerings.  To make my point I appealed to higher authority.  I said something like, “As Bishop Wuerl once said to me, when you bury a parishioner you bury his envelope with him.  We are burying 175 parishioners a year.”  My priest friends loved that one.  Parishioners cringed.  Sometimes it does not pay to be honest.)

So it happened last month when I departed Saint Juan Diego Parish and Sharpsburg I was interviewed by Tawnya Panizzi of The Herald, a local subsidiary of Trib Total Media which serves Aspinwall, Fox Chapel, O’Hara and Sharpsburg.  See www.yourfoxchapel.com/herald/article/st-juan-diego-parishioners-loss-reassignment (July 28, 2011).  And last week I received a call from David Burcham of the New Castle News.  So the “story” of my appointment to St. Vitus and St. Vincent de Paul Parishes appeared on Friday.  See www.ncnewsonline.com/opinion/x1942920458/New-St-Vitus-pastor-believes-in-listening  (August 12, 2011).  In the case of The Herald, our parish had built up good relations with the paper.  We had given it a heads up for stories (when Bishop Zubik came to town, the merging of our three parishes into one, sale of parish properties, seminarians working in parish, etc.) and Tawnya and her associates were grateful.  I took their calls when they wanted a quote.  They even interviewed me when I went on my 30-day silent retreat last year.  See www.yourfoxchapel.com/herald/article/sharpsburg-church-leader-embarking-30-day-retreat  (June 24, 2011).  I hope our parishes can have similar good relations with the New Castle News. 

Engaging the media is another one of those subjects which my seminary never taught us.  But I hope the seminaries are teaching media relations today.  If the pope can handle reporters’s questions in a news conference (albeit with questions submitted beforehand) so should any pastor.