Methodist newspaper to close after 166 years

Christian’s feeling that same sense of grief and loss for the Dallas-based United Methodist Reporter, a 166-year-old Texas institution that is seeing its last days.

“I’m standing vigil for something that’s been very important in my life,” said Christian, director of production for the newspaper who has worked there since 1975. “I’m in mourning.”

The announced closing of the Reporter, which covered the denomination but was independent of the church, saddened many who remember the critical role it once played uniting Methodists around the country.

The paper’s last day was Friday.

Tony Pederson, chairman of the journalism department at Southern Methodist University, called it “a bad day for journalism and a bad day for Methodism.”

“The Reporter has always been quite a strong voice for Methodists,” Pederson said, “but also just for overall matters of faith.”

The Reporter traces its roots to 1847, when Methodists began publishing the Texas Christian Advocate and Brenham Advertiser in Brenham.

“It’s no secret that many faith communities are stretched financially, particularly among mainline Protestants,” said Debra Mason, director of the Center on Religion and the Professions at the University of Missouri. “One of the first places that they cut are their communications.”

The Reporter was structured so that a Dallas-based news staff covered issues pertinent to the denomination, with topics as varied as the history of hymns to church law and homosexuality.

Then individual churches or conferences of churches sent their local information — new pastors being named, how much a church function raised — to be printed in a newsletter combining the two.

The Reporter’s closing is a loss, Mason said, because “any time you have an independent voice writing about religion disappear, you’re at risk of having to rely on the inside voices and the PR experts at these denominations.”

Sam Hodges, managing editor of the Reporter, said something else is being lost: a tie that bound Methodists together.

“The United Methodist Church really prides itself on being connectional,” he said.

Without the Reporter, some of that’s gone, Hodges said.

“The United Methodist Church, like all denominations, has big challenges,” he said, “and needs an independent place for news and commentaries. And we were that.”

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