Rising costs and declining revenue have driven the 1.2-million-member United Church of Christ to end its newsprint publication in September, replacing it with a portfolio which includes an expanded Web news portal, email publications and a MyUCC social networking community.
The United Church News tied last year for third place in the Associated Church Press competition for best national or international religion newspaper in North America. Distributed for free to UCC members since 2001, it had a reported 2008 circulation of 206,000 and was said to be the nation's largest denominational newspaper.
In a move toward "citizen journalism," registered MyUCC users can create their own blogs and group discussions, upload images and video and otherwise "contribute their own body of unfiltered content, opinions, reflections and creative work," said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, the UCC's director of communications.
The UCC added a weekly an email publication in October to its Web headline service, denominational news page, news blog and podcasts.
Plans are being developed to meet an expressed congregational need for a printed "identity publication" in the Spring of 2010. Guess described it as a twice-yearly, paid-subscription, "oversized, full-color, coffee-table publication of 80-to-100 pages."
Created in 1985 to succeed A.D. Magazine and the United Church Herald, the United Church News published 10 editions per year until 2005. Then, as a result of financial pressure, the number was cut to six.
Another edition is to be printed in June and the final newsprint edition is to be published in September, when it joins the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness and other print-on-paper publications whose archive is complete.
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