Moral dilemmas of a modern journalist...

... and 'happy birthday' to this newsletter

Today is the first anniversary of this Substack, so it’s a good time to reflect on the experience, and the practice of writing about Christianity and culture more generally.

Have I met my stated goals for this newsletter? I wrote in my first post:

I hope to maintain my reputation of creating thoughtful, fair and challenging articles that help the reader to understand complex issues and to reflect on them.

I’ve covered an enormous number of subjects over the past year, from Western imposition of LGBT ideology onto Africa, to a short critique of feminism, to postmodernism and an awful lot of reporting on the “culture wars” and US politics. My favourite stories were more inspirational, including many personal stories of courage and forgiveness, the amazing Holocaust rescuer Father Benoit, and the path of love of the great Yorkshire medieval monk St Aelred of Rievaulx. Covering the contemporary stories of redemption of Joseph Pearce and

Theodore Wilmot

and their opinions on the “far right” riots felt valuable too.

Again I am grateful to the Christian outlets who pay for my work and allow me to write for a living - especially Christian Today, Premier Christian Media (which includes both Christianity magazine and Unbelievable) and the Catholic Herald. The latter is crowdfunding at the moment, which I hope will get strong support. If you’re a conservative-minded Protestant, it’s worth checking out some of their social and political commentary.

There is a reason the Substack platform has become so popular with writers. It is easy to use, and does seem to attract new readers to my work via the app. However many of my readers are directed here from my published work, while my newsletters usually link to my work on the outside. Writing on Substack alone would have fewer benefits, I suspect.

I don’t, at the moment, offer content on here that is exclusive for paid subscribers. So I guess that those who have a paid subscription just want to support my work, which I really appreciate - thank you! As I’ve written, more secure financing is sorely needed by all Christian media in the brave new world we live in. To improve the quality of the media and adjust its biases, it matters where we choose to spend our pennies.

There are tensions and moral questions in doing what I do. I feel conflicted about paywalls which are becoming the last resort for many online newspapers. Because many people are used to getting their media for free online, rather than buying a paper publication, the media’s bottom lines have been dwindling, as has the income of all writers except those in high demand.

There are problems with this model. For example, if I write something that I think is helpful or worthwhile, behind a paywall it will have considerably less impact than if it is freely available. I also feel uncomfortable about promoting a story on social media that requires payment to be read, even though money is essential for its creation.

The answer to this may be to introduce more voluntary donations like I receive on this app. Also, as a consumer, I’d value a means by which I can pay a small amount per article rather than subscribing to the larger publications. And I wonder how far Substack can go - I’ve not subscribed to all the newsletters and online publications I think are interesting, yet I’m completely overwhelmed by all the content I receive via email each morning. As I’ve explained, this is one reason why it’s very hard to be well informed nowadays.

It was very different to be a writer insulated from financial concerns, as I was in my earliest days on national newspapers, compared to today’s modern scribe who must be more aware of the popularity of their writing and a means to fund it. Online, this awareness leads to what is called “grifting” “clickbait” and “engagement farming” - content intended to get attention in order to get more income, that lacks authenticity or even basic ethics. On X and YouTube today, more views leads to more payment by the company, so there is a direct pressure to do this.

My goal is to resist this temptation as much as possible. Added to this danger is the innate tendency towards pride or the desire for admiration that most of us have, but is a trap for any believing Christian writer. In general, I wonder at a world in which our ability to get ‘likes’ and popularity via the false medium of ‘screens’ is so closely associated with our influence. Social media seems to reward narcissism and psychopathic behaviour - evidenced by some of the popular and supposedly traditionalist Christian accounts who have been exposed as fakes recently. Having said all that, I also see very worthwhile and positive content on X and YouTube that would never have got into a mainstream outlet. So there are pros and cons to the new world.

Spiritually, my goal is to let go of inner desires for attention, money or success and to completely surrender my work to God. Often I don’t receive much feedback on what I do. Although it’s good to engage with people about important issues, I think generally it’s best to avoid attention to cultivate humility. But I experienced a short period of discouragement recently, when I wondered if this is the right path, as there are so many others vying to be writers, including those in the Christian and conservative space that I inhabit. There are considerably fewer people doing the kind of practical, caring ministry roles I used to do - surely I should go back to that, where there seems to be more need?

Obviously I prayed about this important question. In the next fortnight I received a number of supportive words from others who had benefited from what I had written. For the moment, it seems, I am meant to be on this somewhat spiritually treacherous path. There is certainly no shortage of interesting events to write about. My list of topics I want to investigate grows ever longer, some extremely important subjects that deserve greater scrutiny. I hope and pray that God will guide me, and all others in this space, to do this with greater wisdom and holiness so that we can shed truth and light in our confusing world. Thank you for your support.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash