CoGS votes to keep printing Journal—as journalistic entity—for at least three years

The Council of General Synod (CoGS) has voted to continue the print publication and journalistic mandate of the Anglican Journal for another three years at least, putting to rest at least temporarily the possibility of shutting it down, making it online-only or converting it to a corporate communications organ.

The communications committee and communications department of General Synod will conduct a comprehensive review of the church’s communications needs, including the mandate of the Anglican Journal and the implications of switching it to a digital instead of print format. (CoGS) voted March 8 to request the review, based on a recommendation made by the communications committee. CoGS also voted to fix the current mandate and format of the Anglican Journal in place for “at least the next three years.” However, during discussion, CoGS amended the motion to shorten the deadline for the review itself from three years from now to the November 2026 meeting of CoGS.

Canon (lay) Clare Burns, chancellor of General Synod, said the next group of CoGS members would be able to change the three-year timeline if there were changes they decided urgently needed to be made to the Journal.

Over the past year, a primatial commission tasked with reimagining the future of the church has been running consultations with church staff, leadership and Anglicans across the country on a list of seven hypotheses about how the church may need to change in the 21st century. The seventh of these hypotheses—and based on the feedback discussed in previous sessions of CoGS, the most controversial—was a statement that it was time for the church to stop funding editorially independent journalism. The commission’s latest report, also released to CoGS at its most recent session March 7-9, calls for an examination of the church’s overall communication needs, its current strategy and what updates or changes may be needed to meet them.

The communications committee asked for a cost-benefit analysis of making the Journal online-only, the Rev. Cynthia Haines Turner, the committee’s chair, told CoGS. That review, performed by national office communications director Henrieta Paukov, concluded there were few savings to be made for the church this way. Converting to an online-only model would require money to be spent retooling other aspects of communication work to replace functions the print Journal serves, the committee’s report said. As well, Paukov’s analysis highlighted remote regions of Canada and Indigenous communities where Anglicans receive regular copies of the Journal but fewer people have access to high-speed internet. Likewise, it notes, the various publications put out by the dioceses are packaged with the Journal and rely on it for distribution, meaning they too would likely have to either shut down or go online-only if the national paper did. The data on how many people would be unable to access an online-only Journal and how many rely primarily on the print edition as their main source of information on the church are incomplete, the analysis adds. It concludes that a comprehensive review is necessary to determine the general communication needs of Anglicans across the country and how to meet them.

The communications committee, along with General Synod staff, plans to approach this task with wide-reaching stakeholder consultation, Haines Turner told CoGS. The motions were suggesting the church maintain the status quo in communications for the moment, she said, not because it was necessarily the best or only option, but because it needed data on which to act before making any changes.

The rationale for the motion on re-examining the Anglican Journal’s mandate states that a series of changes related to the workings of the Journal—including the merging of the two committees that formerly oversaw the communications department and Journal into a single committee, plus the establishment of an editorial board for the paper and a set of principles for its journalistic practice, all adopted in 2019—“appear to be working relatively well.” It continues, “before making any changes, a survey of stakeholders would mean that decisions would be data-based.” In a conversation with the Journal later in the weekend, Haines Turner said she and a majority of the communications committee were happy with the paper’s journalistic stance as it is and leaned away from wanting to change it.

Earlier in the weekend, a primatial commission tasked with finding ways to adapt the church to the 21st century introduced six “pathways” for change, the fourth of which was a set of recommendations for the church’s communications strategy to which the motions introduced March 8 bear clear similarities. The pathways document likewise calls for an examination of the mandate, format and funding model of the church’s communications strategy. It also calls for a review of the purpose of the Anglican Journal, and while acknowledging the paper’s role as an accountability organ for General Synod and the wider church. the commission asserts in its report that journalism funded by the church is “not a sufficient tool to ensure accountability and transparency across the Anglican Church of Canada.”

The report goes on to add that the communications review “should include voices from across the country and attempt to gather input on whether the Anglican Journal is valued as a ‘journalistic enterprise’ or if its most important role is that of a communications tool that connects Anglicans across the country.”

In its analysis of the survey responses gathered during the primate’s commission’s own consultation process, the report states that some of its respondents mentioned this accountability function. “Several noted that there is a need for an independent watcher to hold us and our leadership accountable and that this is why the Anglican Journal and journalists are needed. This raised the question of whether or not we should be funding our own accountability or if accountability and transparency should be embedded more effectively in our systems and processes.”