Re: The National Catholic Reporter vs. The National Catholic Register
The National Catholic Reporter is by far the older and more venerable publication. It was started in print, well before the dawn of the Internet, at a time where pretty much the only source of information about the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, apart from the occasional article in the mainstream non-religious press, were officially sanctioned publications like diocesan newsletters and the like.
The Reporter was started with the idea that it was good to have an independent publication covering the Church, and not just publications run by or formally associated with the Church, because an independent publication could give unbiased news and editorials without having to run it by the people they were covering, or having a bishop tell them that they had to drop a columnist or something. Of course, it wasn't completely a distinct entity in so far as most of the staff were practicing Catholics, and there were priests and nuns among the writers, and even, at one point, a bishop, but it was funded by donations and subscription fees and it's own entity that didn't have to answer to anyone except for it's readers.
There was a point in the United States, across the board really, not just in the Roman Catholic tradition, but in a lot of Protestant churches as well, where big money started coming pouring into things like religious publications from the nascent alliance between the religious right and economic right, the alliance that built the modern Republican Party. The Reporter was self-sustaining and didn't need the right-wing's money, so the Republican investors couldn't buy the paper's editorial integrity.
Now, I can't draw a direct line to this, but in that environment, the National Catholic Register popped up. It's far younger than the National Catholic Reporter, and has a far more conservative slant. The NCR initials are almost certainly not a coincidence- it's playing off the name recognition of NCR as an abbreviation for the National Catholic Reporter. I honestly would have sued them had I been in charge of the Reporter at that time. It may or may not be a trademark violation under the law, but I'd expect better from a religious publication. Build your own brand and don't try to bootstrap off the popularity of another paper by sowing confusion in the marketplace using a set of welk known initials associated with something else. So many people today don't even know which came first, and I can't say that I don't believe that the Register created that situation intentionally.
They also pretty explicitly started because they thought the *real* NCR got too liberal, so it's sort of a double whammy- like, we'll trash your reputation *and* we'll sort of steal your name, more or less. It is not something that reflects well upon them, in my opinion.
There are far worse outlets than the Register, but I'm not very interested in them. I'll stick to the real NCR. If someone posts a direct link to an article I want to read in the other one, I'll read it, but I try to be very aware of the source.
Now, just to be fair, I do know someone who's written for the Register in the past and is a person of high integrity. It's not like it's all partisan hacks or something, although this person is predictably a Republican.
I just don't like it as a primary source of news about the Church for me personally. Of course, everyone should decide these things for themselves. I am not saying that its a bad fit for everyone.
