PCUSA closes down second national publication
The Layman Online, August 7, 2001
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has shelved a second denomination-produced national publication because of rising costs, declining circulation and competition.
Gary Luhr, the denomination’s associate director for communication, said August 6 that the 64-year-old Monday Morning will cease publication at the end of 2001.
In March 2000, the denomination stopped publishing a tabloid-sized newspaper, Presbyterians Being Faithful to Jesus Christ, which had been started as an alternative to The Presbyterian Layman.
The Presbyterian Layman is an independent newspaper with a circulation of more than 500,000. While it has no affiliation with the denomination, The Layman, which is edited from an evangelical worldview, is considered the paper of record by friend and foe alike.
John Buchanan, a former moderator of the denomination and one of the leaders in the launching of Presbyterians Being Faithful to Jesus Christ, said when he proposed the new publication that “People know that The Presbyterian Layman is the chief source of news about the Presbyterian Church by a huge margin.”
When Presbyterians Being Faithful was shut down, Luhr said the publication “hasn’t had the impact that some people had hoped for.”
Both Monday Morning and Presbyterians Being Faithful had extended lifetimes because of heavy subsidies from the denomination. Copies of Monday Morning were provided free to all pastors and co-pastors until the 1996 General Assembly cut off funding from the per-capita and mission budgets. The denomination’s Board of Pensions continued to pay for the subscriptions of retired pastors.
Presbyterians Being Faithful was started in May 1997 as a public relations piece to counter The Layman. After six issues and $600,000 in costs, the General Assembly Council voted to reduce the number of annual issues from four to three. It authorized an additional $450,000 from the mission and per-capita budgets and penciled in donations that Buchanan had pledged to raise. The donations never amounted to enough to keep the project alive.
In announcing the demise of Monday Morning, Luhr said a study by the denomination’s Research Services Office showed “little potential for the magazine to grow even outside its traditional niche.” The survey found little interest among non-subscribers, he added.
The denomination continues to publish a magazine titled Presbyterians Today and to post items on its Web site, www.pcusa.org.
Through job-related and other classified advertising, the denomination also has close ties with The Presbyterian Outlook, an independent monthly publication that goes primarily to pastors.
In the spring of 2000, a readership survey by Campbell Research of Santa Maria, Calif., showed that Presbyterians were 2.5 times more likely to read The Layman than The Outlook and 3.5 times more likely to read The Layman than Presbyterians Today.
The Layman has been published since 1965 by the Presbyterian Lay Committee. The Lay Committee is comprised of 25 lay church leaders, men and women, black and white, from across the country. The Layman is offered free to anyone who wants to receive it. The production and distribution of the newspaper in the United States and 20 foreign countries is underwritten by contributions from thousands of Presbyterians.