CWN unveils new approach to headline coverage
August 31, 2017
Today Catholic World News (CWN) is inaugurating a different approach to daily headline-news coverage.
Regular CWN readers will notice a dramatic increase in the number of News Briefs we provide every weekday. We know that our readers have a wide range of interests. Rather than choosing the few stories that our staff can cover, we’re presenting readers with a broad array of choices.
Frankly, it seems unlikely that any reader will be interested in all of the headline stories we present each day. Naturally, we are placing the headlines that we consider most important near the top of our news home page. But some readers will have different priorities. You can choose from a full menu, selecting the stories you find particularly interesting.
Our new system also allows us to leave the most interesting headlines available on our home page for a few days—or for as long as they continue to attract readers’ attention.
Today it’s very easy for any reader to find the latest news—about the Catholic Church or about any other topic—by searching the web. What’s not so easy is distinguishing between reliable news coverage and sensational accounts, between balanced perspectives and biased reporting. So even when the news is available on other outlets, CWN serves an important editorial function: separating the wheat from the chaff.
To emphasize that function, CWN’s new approach to daily news coverage puts the emphasis on our unique perspective. Here’s what you’ll find:
- CWN will continue to offer readers a line-up of the most important headline stories every weekday. In fact we are greatly expanding the number of headline stories on our news home page.
- When a news story that appears on another outlet is substantially accurate, we provide a link, sending readers directly to that story. When the story contains an error, or a perspective that calls out for correction, we include an editor’s note, letting readers know what they should understand before they begin reading the news account.
- In every case, the headline you see on our news page will be our own (though it may at times be the same as the headline used on the third-party story). This ensures that readers know what CWN regards as the importance of each story.
- Of course CWN will also continue providing our own reports, when we uncover breaking news or when other outlets do not give a topic adequate coverage.
For more than 20 years, CWN has been providing readers with reliable coverage of the day’s news. We’ve sought to make our site available for a sort of “one-stop shopping”—giving readers all the information they need about current affairs of interest to Catholic readers. The world of online news coverage has changed tremendously since we started out in 1996, and with this new system of coverage we believe that we’re better able to keep our readers informed.
The editorial goal of CWN remains unchanged; we seek to offer readers an accurate view of world affairs, from a distinctly Catholic perspective. With our new format we will help readers to discover the enormous resources of information that are already available online, while guiding them through the pitfalls of inaccurate coverage.
A word of caution: When we link to stories on other outlets, we do not necessarily endorse the editorial policies of those outlets, nor can we vouch for the accuracy of other stories on those sites. We trust in the intelligence and discernment of our readers.
- Phil Lawler, editor
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Posted by: tcflanagan -
Sep. 04, 2017 2:19 PM ET USA
I half-agree with stpetric. I like the extra stories, but bring back the links in the emails, please!
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Posted by: stpetric -
Sep. 01, 2017 8:59 PM ET USA
I don't need lots and lots of headlines; I've already got that. The value of your service has been precisely to exercise editorial discretion and screen out a large percentage of the headlines that batter us each day. Second, your new e-mails don't include links to the stories you cite, forcing an extra step on me. So far, this doesn't look like an improvement to me!
