By Cathy Blankenau Bender
Editor-in-Chief, Southern Nebraska Register
One of my grandfather’s best friends was a self-described “old newspaper man.” Allen worked for his father, the owner of a small-town Iowa newspaper, even before getting his degree in journalism in 1928. He became owner and publisher of the paper less than 10 years later, when his parents and sister were killed in a car crash. He made running that newspaper his life’s work.
Allen retired from the paper the year I was born, but he continued writing a weekly column – and a book – and he continued celebrating the stories and the connections he’d built over more than four decades gathering news. For him, journalism was a way of life, a way to share the stories of the community he loved with everyone he met.
He was excited when I started studying journalism, and he would gleefully chuckle at my shocked gasps when he described the day-to-day details from his newspaper days to me: things like typesetting by hand. I like to think I laugh the same way when I tell my children about the “old days” at the Southern Nebraska Register.
When I started working for the Register in 1997, we used a satellite dish to capture the Catholic news wire from Washington, D.C. The satellite fed news to a computer with a dot matrix printer. We could peruse the text for stories of interest in the Diocese of Lincoln, and retrieve our selections from that computer onto a 5-inch floppy disk.
This was before e-mail was commonly used, I explained to my children when they were small. All local items and all op-ed columns arrived by mail, on paper, and had to be typed and saved to disks, too. Our pinnacle column came on its own 5-inch floppy disk; hand-delivered in person each week by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz. He was always on time (early), always cordial, always listened to my questions—and he always knew the answer, often with an interesting anecdote, as well!
All the “pieces” of the paper – texts on the floppy disks, hard copies of photos with crop marks and proportion measurements, and instructions for placement – were placed in a large envelope for our printing company. Drafts were then driven back and forth across town as we made changes to a pasted-up version of the weekly paper, before it was ultimately printed. Then we started over for the next week!
Of course, I now create the Register in an entirely digital format, which I send to the printer electronically. In addition to our weekly paper, we also provide content for the diocesan website and social media channels (if you don’t already, follow the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube!). I hope one day I’ll be able to make my grandchildren laugh at how much technology has advanced since the “old days” of 2025. I don’t know what the future will hold for news media technology, but I am sure Catholic media will retain a strong presence.
Late in 2023, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a national, non-profit, Georgetown University-affiliated research center that conducts studies for and about the Church, released results from a national survey it conducted on Catholic media use.
While I obviously have a rather pro-Catholic-media mindset, even I was surprised by the jump they found in Catholic media usage. For example, CARA reported a “significant increase” in the share of adult Catholics who watched religious or spiritual video content. How big is a “significant increase”? Well, in 2023, 45% of Catholics had done so in the three months prior to being surveyed, compared to only 24% in 2011 and 28% in 2005.
Researchers attributed some of the jump to pandemic practices that led people to seek out online Masses, Zoom Bible studies and the like. While in-person Mass attendance is now very near pre-pandemic levels, many people surveyed said they continued using the technology they’d leaned on during the pandemic. They go to their parish websites and social media channels for information now; they search the web for faith-based prayers, apps and videos, and they read many more religious-based articles online. Thinking of the many Catholic media resources available—and a growing number of people who long to find more faith-based content in their media consumption—is extremely encouraging!
CARA found the number of adult Catholics who read their diocesan publication has risen, as well. Prior to the pandemic, only about a quarter of American Catholics read their diocesan newspaper or magazine (Ouch!). But in 2023, nearly twice as many read it – 49%. While that still leaves room for improvement, it’s an encouraging jump.
The CARA study emphasized the worth of a printed publication, saying: “Catholics are more likely to support the continued used of print versions of their diocesan publication rather than this being discontinued. This is especially important to weekly Mass attenders.” Specifically, 62% of weekly Mass attenders called the print version of their diocesan publication an “essential” part of how the diocese communicates.
Again, my preferences are probably obvious, but judging from my active inbox here at the Register, I believe the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln falls into that category. Our mission at the Register is “Spreading the Good News of Christ and His Church since 1932.” And in the Diocese of Lincoln, we have a lot of good news to share!
February is Catholic Press Month in the United States, which means parishes across the diocese will collect $16 per household for the Southern Nebraska Register. This annual subscription fee makes our work possible, and we are very grateful for that! Thank you for helping us share the Good News of Christ—and our local Church.
