The Catholic Herald’s U.S. edition is shutting down its offices in Washington, D.C., after less than two years of publication, people familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner.
The magazine, which claims to be “America’s only national Catholic weekly magazine of current affairs and culture,” reached the decision after concluding that its operations had been mismanaged, a person familiar with the matter said. The magazine’s ownership “didn’t have realistic expectations” at any point in the publication’s effort to build a presence in the United States, he added.
A spokesman for the Catholic Herald told the Washington Examiner that the magazine is closing its D.C. offices to build a more “digitally focused Catholic media business.” The Catholic Herald has plans to move its editorial operations to New York, the spokesman said, with “exciting new appointments relating to the new U.S. team being made shortly.”
The publication has never been profitable, with only about 900 paying subscribers at its height.
The magazine’s offices, located just outside of Dupont Circle, have sat empty since July 2019, when the U.S. staff quit over a disagreement with the magazine’s board. The Catholic Herald attempted to fill their positions for more than six months while running the magazine out of its offices in London.
The Catholic Herald’s parent company is also going through a transitional period. Longtime editor Luke Coppen on Wednesday announced that, in April, he will move from the Catholic Herald to the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency. Coppen will be replaced by British journalist Dan Hitchens, a Catholic Herald spokesman said.
The Catholic Herald launched its U.S. edition to much fanfare in late 2018 in New York City. The launch was hosted by the magazine’s primary owner, British hotelier Rocco Forte. Forte owns the majority of the magazine, along with British newspaperman William Cash and disgraced British politician Brooks Newmark.
Upon its launch, the magazine promised to be a trusted news source for Catholics in the wake of a series of sexual abuse scandals.
“The American church has been devastated by a series of scandals that require urgent scrutiny,” it said on its website. “Our powerful reporting, opinion pieces and cultural analysis will be a resource for orthodox Catholics who face a time of profound crisis.”
It soon became embroiled in its own controversy when it published a piece by the Greek journalist Taki Theodoracopulos that was criticized on social media as anti-Semitic. In a Christmas column, he wrote that the New York Times eschews its coverage of sexual abuse in Hasidic Jewish communities in favor of covering sexual abuse in the Catholic Church because of the paper’s “sizable” Jewish readership.
American journalist Sohrab Ahmari published a response piece in the Catholic Herald: “Why Taki’s views disgust me.” Ahmari noted that Theodoracopulos’s piece had been published “to the chagrin of many of the magazine’s friends.”
More turbulence followed when then-editor-in-chief Damian Thompson quit the magazine in July 2019. Thompson, a sharp critic of Pope Francis, wrote on Twitter that he and the magazine’s ownership had a fundamental disagreement about “the future direction of the company.” Thompson’s exit prompted the departure of the U.S. staff.
The new owners of the @CatholicHerald and I do not agree on the future direction of the company (for my stance, see @RaymondArroyo’s show last week). Therefore I’m moving to the @spectator where I will be free to tell you what I really think 🙂
— Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) July 4, 2019
Thompson has remained a critic of both the magazine and the pope on Twitter.
The Catholic Herald was founded in 1888 in the United Kingdom.
