Jim Coyle

As we videotaped our footage, a crew from Cox Communications, owners of the NBC affiliate TV station in Steubenville, videotaped us and recorded interviews with the students. Their story appeared on the 11:00 news in Steubenville tonight, although I couldn’t view it online.

Members of the team will be blogging about our project this week at Franciscan Papal Initiative, so check there for some of our experiences. We won’t have regular Internet access, but through the students’ gadgets I hope we can post from the midst of Pope Benedict’s visit to the USA. 

Their production will be one of the first professionally produced documentaries to tell the true story of how college students are positively influenced by their religion and how they are moved by the first visit of this pontiff to the United States.

Prior to Pope Benedict’s arrival, the Franciscan University film crew will be granted special access to the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., where the pope will conduct a peace dialogue with leaders of other faiths that will be one of the most significant interfaith discussions of his papacy. The crew will be allowed into the chapel where the pope will pray and receive an in-depth briefing about the preparations and protocol for the pope’s visit.

The production crew will also conduct interviews with college students and young people as they attend other papal events and mingle in Washington, D.C., streets, cafés, and restaurants.

In addition, they will conduct interviews with some of the world’s leading athletes who will be in Washington for the pope’s visit and a meeting of Catholic Athletes for Christ.

The three-part mini-series is a collaborative effort between Capistrano Films, an inspirational and faith-based production company, and the Communication Arts Department of Franciscan University of Steubenville. It will be co-directed by Antonio Soave of Capistrano Films and Dr. Jim Coyle of Franciscan University. The crew, comprised of television and journalism students, will be led by Maria Mitchell and Emma Smits.

Jim Coyle

 We’re using the occasion [of Pope Benedict's U.S. visit] as an opportunity to start a broad-ranging conversation about the rich tradition of Roman Catholicism — its history, trajectory, and the contemporary issues Catholics are wrestling with. Although we often hear news stories about the Catholic Church, diverse practitioners of the faith have had little voice in telling their stories.

If you are or were Catholic, we’d like to hear your perspectives on what anchors and unsettles you in this vast tradition. We’re also interested in the hopes and concerns you have for the church, now and into the future.

It will be interesting to find out what personal stories people share. And thanks for the tip about this from Pope2008.com.

The interview with Alan Schreck is an excerpt from an episode of Spirit and Life: The Franciscan Conferences Podcast, a bi-weekly podcast from Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Information about the music in this edition of the Catholic Media Journal Podcast can be found here. And to be an early subscriber to our free podcasts, just Subscribe Here.

We recorded the 25-minute conversation as the first edition of the Catholic Media Journal Podcast and invite you to listen. Just use our player:

Update 3/21/2008: To be an early subscriber to our podcasts, follow this link. 

The first blog is Pope2008.com written by Tim Drake, an active Catholic author and journalist who blogged during World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, sharing stories through words and pictures. The next blog is from members of the Communications staff of the USCCB – the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops – who are key planners for logistics and media relations for the U.S. Papal Visit. Right below that blog is a feed showing the most recent stories from the Papal Visit 2008 website.

These are RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and will be showing the most recent posts and stories from their sources. Click on a post’s title or the name of the source to go directly to the website.

We’ll be adding more as time goes on, so be sure to check them out.

Catholic Media Journal started in October 2005 as an online diary by Catholic journalists reporting on the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana. We’ve re-activated the Journal, planning to take a wider look at communications within and about the Catholic Church. A major event we’re planning to cover is the April visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United States, looking especially at New Media stories – and the communications technology being used in 2008. I’m anticipating many changes in technology since covering my last Papal Visit – World Youth Day in Denver with Pope John Paul II in 1993. All of it, though, should help tell stories of the Pope’s visit to the United States – more ”up close and personal” than ever before.

Jim Coyle

No wonder Pope Benedict XVI is calling for development of “info-ethics” in today’s information-driven world. Journalism is an important aspect of that.

Jim Coyle