THE SAGA OF CHRISTIAN AMERICAN: IDENTIFYING MISSION AND
LOCATING AUDIENCE AT A RELIGIOUSLY ORIENTED ORGANIZATIONAL
PUBLICATION
by
Kyle Huckins
Department of Journalism
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
(512) 491-6365
[log in to unmask]
Abstract: "The Saga of Christian American: Identifying Mission and Locating
Audience at a
Religiously Oriented Organizational
Publication"
This paper is a case study of the struggle to define the outlook and readership
of the Christian Coalition's official newspaper, later a magazine. Through
interviews with all members of the publication's editorial staff during its
eight years of operation, the author tells the often intriguing tale of its
changes in philosophy, management and voice, while at the same time relating the
moves to theoretical concepts about media audiences and audience-making.
The Saga of Christian American
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Introduction
Much of the literature to date about audience-making has revolved around
analysis of television and its conceptualization of audiences, primarily as
markets (i.e., Curran, 1990; Blumler, 1996). Sometimes these audiences are
conceived as active (Katz, 1996), other times as little more than objects of
manipulation (Withey, 1980). There has been interest in text, to be sure, with
some representation for the daily newspaper (Wildman, 1994), and even romance
novels (Radway, 1984). However, little has been done on the machinations behind
the in-house sheet, especially one with a religious orientation.
The trials and tribulations of in-house or organizational media can offer a
wealth of information on models of audience activism, passivity, and
construction of reality, as well as the groups producing them (Board, 1990).
These publications tell us something about society, something about the
organization's view of society, and, ultimately, something about ourselves.
The subject of study here is Christian American, the official compendium of
Christian Coalition since soon after the founding of the organization of
religious conservatives. Though not tied to a specific denomination, its very
title revealed spiritual ideals, now tied to the modern "special-interest
group." Like its earlier cousins, it mixed religion with politics, reflecting
the agenda of its parent.
By interviewing personnel and tying in relevant quantitative data, this study
attempts to trace evolutions at Christian American of differing conceptions of
mission, audience and organizational dynamics, allowing comparisons to secular
constructions.
The religiously oriented organizational publication is a familiar facet of the
American journalism scene, dating back to the 18th century and becoming
widespread by early in the 19th. "A religious newspaper would have been a
phenomenon not many years since; but now the groaning press throws them out in
almost every direction," Methodist Magazine noted 175 years ago (quoted in Mott,
1939: 136).
The Saga of Christian American
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Almost from the beginning, these broadsheets and folios covered secular as well
as religious news, gathering reports from correspondents near and far, secular
and spiritual (Mott, 1939). As fierce competition ensued, the journals' pages
increasingly took on controversial topics; eventually, publication gobbled up
publication, usually leaving but one or two per denomination (Mott, 1957).
The story of Christian American has its own set of conflicts and dichotomies,
perhaps not always expected in a newsroom along its ideological lines. Both its
rise from little more than a flier in 1990 to a circulation of nearly a
half-million five years later and its decline to abrupt termination with the end
of 1997 have linkages to changing ideas about who was reading the publication
and who would (or should) read it.
The assumption, of course, is that such a tabloid newspaper (later magazine)
would simply follow the dictates of leadership and represent top officials'
views to organization members. This did happen, but not without resistance
resulting from the melding of reporter instincts and social activism. Politics,
religion and journalism fused with sparks, and occasionally, explosions.
Thus, this paper seeks to tell the often compelling tale of a growing and
dynamic media culture within the framework of audience-making terms and
outlooks. First, let us put our terms in order.
Terminology
Providing helpful guidance for this study are definitions of four broad
conceptions of the audience by audience-makers, based on the work of Blumler
(1996). First, there is the audience as market, in which those viewing,
listening or reading may be seen as:
Dcommodity, with media producers simply seeking a sale
Dnumbers, the increase (or strategic decrease) in the total of audience members
Dindividuals, attendant to appeals based on a variety of demographic factors
Dspectators, who withhold or grant attention as a sort of interested bystander
(along the lines of Lang and Lang, 1983)
The Saga of Christian American
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Second, the audience may be construed as a public, activated to fulfill a
particular social role. The emphasis is, as Ang (1991) might put it, on
meaningful messages rather than on meaningful advertisements. This is a fairly
frequent use of oppositional news (Eliasoph, 1997).
Another view is as "fans of a taste culture" (Blumler, 1996: 101). These fans
enjoy particular styles of writing or other entertainment, and seek them out.
Radway's romance novels qualify, as do the "fanzines" now popular in many major
media markets.
Next is the social group, related to the taste culture but distinct in that it
comes out of class, race and, most specifically in the present case, religion.
Identification with such social groups is often viewed as key in the
transference of message meaning (Turner, 1982).
Gauging the activity or passivity or audience members has been a difficult
proposition at best, with escapist uses of media (Zillman, 1980) conceived by
some as active, while activity might also be defined in terms of the tenacious
audience member who may resist unwanted media messages while consuming content
(Bauer, 1964). In this study, an audience-maker's conception of audience
members' activity will often mean seeing an ability to construct meanings,
taking information and putting it to uses perhaps not straightforwardly
communicated.
Passivity is as hard a term, but the "hypodermic needle" model may be a good
place to begin. The belief that the injection of a message into an audience
will make the members of that audience perform the desired action was an early
tenet of mass media research (Bauer and Bauer, 1960). This would be a
conception of a passive audience, one that could be given "marching orders" and
expected to proceed.
We shall see that each of these terms has some use in the study of Christian
American and its officials' location of its audience and their expectations of
it. Let us then begin at the beginning in the case study, with the founding of
the publication.
The Saga of Christian American
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Case Study
The Rev. Pat Robertson said he founded the Christian Coalition in 1989 to
"speak out against the anti-Christian bigotry we see in the news coverage, on
university campuses, in the schools, in the public debate, and in many other
areas of American life ... [to] stand up for our values and our beliefs"
(Christian Coalition leaflet, 1995). The organization started operation with a
28-year-old executive director named Ralph Reed, fresh from doctoral studies in
history at Emory University in Atlanta.
The new face did inherit old baggage. The Christian Coalition started from the
remnants of the failed Robertson 1988 presidential campaign, as Reed mined old
campaign rolls to find members for the new group. The people he found were much
like those who comprised the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. While they
were somewhat more educated, they were still conservative politically and
religiously and most likely located in the U.S. South (Green and Guth, 1996;
Green, 1996).
Christian Coalition leadership was not a mere repackaging of that at Moral
Majority, however. Falwell was a fundamentalist, Robertson a charismatic; this
kept them from organizing together during Moral Majority's 10-year run, which
ended as the Coalition began (Moen, 1992). Reed also differed greatly from
Falwell's top lieutenant, Ron Godwin, a Christian educator with no experience at
political organizing or media appearances (Godwin, pers. com., 1996). Coalition
leaders have acknowledged they learned much from the sectarian outbursts of
Majority personnel and sought to avoid the same costly mistakes (McCormack,
pers. com., 1996).
Strategic use of media figured prominently in the Coalition from the beginning.
From the time of organization, Reed was to be the primary contact with the media
(McCormack, 1996). He succeeded in relations with secular media to such a great
degree that he could call reporters by their first names at press conferences,
surprising longtime political observers with his savvy (Edsall, 1993).
The Saga of Christian American
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Organizational media were also important. A conversation with Martin Mawyer,
former editor of Moral Majority Report, that group's irregularly published
newspaper, convinced Reed to found a paper for his new Coalition (Butler, pers.
com., 1996). Fortunately for Reed, Regent University, Robertson's renamed CBN
University, had a lively journalism graduate program churning out writers and
editors. The young executive director chose John Wheeler, a near-graduation
master's student, as the first editor of Christian American.
Wheeler, 41, was a veteran of secular newspaper reporting, including time at
the Chattanooga Times. A self-described left-wing radical in the 1960s, he had
been born again in 1981, forsaking drugs and the occult for a personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. Finishing a bachelor's degree at Tennessee's
Bryan College, named after the famed creationist orator and statesman, he moved
his large family to Virginia to pursue a graduate degree at Regent. His
charismatic Baptist beliefs fell in line with Robertson's, and his interest in
the blending of religion and politics appealed to Reed (Wheeler, pers. com.,
1996). He began work on the first Christian American, an eight-page folio, in
1990.
The paper's slogan was "A Christian Review of the News." Wheeler interpreted
this to mean a look at the day's social and political issues through a Christian
lens, seeking to engage and, occasionally, enrage.
I was told that, 'We want this to be a kind of a cutting-edge, in-your-face
activist-focused publication,' so we dealt them issues with AIDS activists,
prayer in school, kids sent home for reading their Bibles at school, anything
dealing with the homosexual agenda in schools, anything with anti-Christian
bigotry, obviously the abortion issue (Wheeler, 1996).
At the same time Reed wanted to have an activist feel to the publication, Pat
Robertson sought a broad circulation for the modestly staffed piece. Wheeler
recalled the Christian Coalition founder stating he wished to have its
circulation up to 10 million in the next decade, available on newsstands at bus
stations, airports and other locations nationwide. The assertion was confirmed
in a story in Christian American (English, 1992).
The Saga of Christian American
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That story was by Paul English, a 24-year-old Regent graduate student. A
member of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America, his beliefs were more
mainline than Wheeler's, but the editor appreciated his Macintosh design skills
and ability to write. The Regent president ordered English dismissed from the
school paper for an allegedly anti-Jewish editorial which the writer claimed
simply pointed out Jewish-Christian cooperation was fine if Christians realized
Jews were unsaved and still needed proselytizing (English, pers. com., 1996).
After the dismissal, Wheeler hired English part-time, and, within a few months,
full-time, becoming assistant editor and second editorial employee.
By the time English began work, Christian American had moved to a full-size
tabloid from its humble newsletter-like beginnings.
When I came on board, I was told by Ralph [Reed], 'We want to
make this paper look like a cross between USA Today and the
National Enquirer,' so that the headlines, for instance, were huge.
We're talking three inches tall sometimes, big, horrible, screaming
headlines. In your face. It went along with some of the quotes
Ralph was giving at the time about guerrilla warfare, body bags,
and war paint1 (English, 1996).
The objective was to appeal to a Christian audience, while recognizing the
religious could have different points of view.
We were actively seeking to promote a Christian or a biblical
world view based on biblical principles, so, no, I wasn't trying
to reinvent the wheel on the abortion debate or the homosexuality
debate. ... What I did want to do is balance opinions among
Christians, specifically conservative Christians (Wheeler, 1996).
When discussing abortion or homosexuality, writers refrained from calling
non-Christian sources such as Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights
Action League or the Advocate, the nation's most widely circulated gay magazine.
Quotes or paraphrases from these people and organizations would appear, lifted
from the Washington Post or another mainstream publication. These were not
necessarily to balance the story, but to move readers to action through the
strong comments of "anti-Christian" activists (Wheeler, 1996).
The Saga of Christian American
-8-
There was an overtly spiritual focus to at least some of the content in
Christian American. Wheeler pulled quotes from the King James Version of the
Bible in compiling a box headlined "The Gospel of Jesus Christ," which ran on
the second of the publication's usual 28 to 32 pages. The paper occasionally
contained articles about Christian happenings lacking political angles, though
these were a distinct minority. There also were more scriptural references per
story than appeared in Moral Majority Report (Huckins, 1996).
Christian American staffers noted early on that their focus with the paper was
different from that of their executive director. "John's [Wheeler's] whole
philosophy of journalism, as was mine, was, 'What are the biblical principles
here that guide us in writing this story?' Ralph's whole philosophy ... never
was that, really, but when he was more radical, he was more in line with our
thinking," English (1996) asserted, adding his doubts as to the strength of
Reed's personal religious convictions. Wheeler (1996) related his boss would
often state he "was a conservative Republican long before he was a Christian."
Reed did, indeed, have what might be termed a militant past. As a college-age
GOP operative, he helped lead pro-life sit-ins at abortion clinics, ending up in
police custody. By the time he joined the Christian Coalition, his tactics were
more subtle but just as tough. "It's better to move quietly with stealth, under
cover of night. ... It comes down to whether you want to be the British army in
the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic was more
effective," he told the Los Angeles Times (Horstman, 1992).
While baby-faced and easy-going, those who worked with Reed testified that he
micromanaged Christian American, sometimes to the point of distraction. Wheeler
recalled sitting down with Reed and going page by page through proofs while the
printer waited, with the executive director often changing single words,
deleting paragraphs, and vetoing headlines. The two once argued for 45 minutes
over whether to include a Cal Thomas column lauding Ted Kennedy for his honesty
in confronting his personal faults; Reed won and the article was cut. The
problem was that Kennedy was a Democrat (Wheeler, 1996).
The Saga of Christian American
-9-
The original vision of Christian American, then, was in the eye of the
beholder. Coalition founder Robertson wanted a broad-circulation tabloid that
would break out of the membership-premium mode. This was close to what Wheeler
saw but never received the funds nor support to put into place. The group
bought commercials on Rush Limbaugh's radio program in 1990-1991 drumming up
memberships through giving away copies of the publication, but Wheeler was the
sole sales staffer and never had a separate circulation manager (Wheeler, pers.
com., 1998). Organizational contacts eventually landed Christian American in
100 to 200 Christian bookstores across the country, but without proper
supervision, those dwindled, leaving print runs mainly to Coalition supporters
donating $15 or more a year (Zhu, pers. com., 1998).
This view emphasized audience as market, a commodity to buy the publication
(which also depended on ad revenues, much of the money coming from
medicine-sellers, as in the early religious weeklies). However, at the same
time, the screaming headlines and urgent, slanted messages pointed to audience
as public, fulfilling a desirable social role. The social group was fairly
coherent, Christian conservatives with activism on their minds. In this sense,
audience members were passive, too, in that they would heed calls to action
given by the publication.
Reed seemed to pose problems for this view. He never provided support for
outside distribution, apparently seeing the newspaper as a strictly in-house
project. By imposing a political rather than an activist agenda on it, he was
likely moving toward an emphasis on the individual under the market heading,
hitting on demographics. If he envisioned a social group, it was based more on
partisanship than religious preference.
Though Reed originally instructed Wheeler and English to be "in the faces" of
readers with their publication, he apparently shifted course with the disastrous
results of the 1992 elections. The Christian Coalition-endorsed Republican
ticket fared poorly, and George Bush vanished from Christian American pages by
Reed's order (Wheeler, 1996).
The Saga of Christian American
-10-
The widespread criticism of efforts of the so-called "Christian Right" in the
campaign caused Reed to reassess the strong socially conservative emphasis of
the organization's agenda. He hired a former radio news director to head public
relations, and concentrated on broadening the Coalition's agenda to include
taxation, trade, immigration, and other conservative issues arguably without a
strictly religious base (Reed, 1996).
Among the changes at Christian American was the cutting of specific religious
language. A January 1993 article detailed how the Rev. Richard Land of the
Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Life Commission had written a letter to
President-elect Bill Clinton warning, "We fear the wrath of God on our nation if
our government pursues this path" (Wheeler, 1993: 21).
So I used that as a headline, "I Fear the Wrath of God Upon America,"
then it had a subhead, "Southern Baptist leader warns Clinton," or
something. We had to stop the presses as the paper was being printed
to change the headline on that particular article because Ralph saw the
page proof and said, "No, we won't print this," so the text of the article
ran but the headline changed. We used a very, kind of a bland headline
["Land Letter Counsels Clinton"]. There was a de-emphasis on concepts
like the wrath of God, that things are happening as a judgment for sin.
I was told to de-emphasize that concept, because that's what the liberal
media wanted to stereotype [us] as thinking (Wheeler, 1996).
Reed did not stop all coverage of controversial issues, but changed the tone of
coverage and lessened the amount of space given to those topics. A content
analysis of Christian American topics found that 47.5% of all 1992 news items
concerned "controversial morality," for example, gay rights, feminism, and
abortion; in 1993, that category comprised only 24.7% of items. Tone toward
non-Christian conservatives also became significantly more positive (Huckins,
1996).
The emphasis, Wheeler (1996) said, was to not allow secular forces to form a
particular mold of the Christian conservative movement. It could be hard-lined,
but also soft-edged, talk about social issues and spend time on budget matters.
"Before that, it was the idea, 'Find me Martians landing in Iowa,' now it's, 'We
must be mainstream. ... We have to broaden our agenda, we have to soften our
image," Wheeler (1996) said.
The Saga of Christian American
-11-
With the change in agenda came changes in language choice. Not only was
Scripture used less overtly, targeted groups also received more objective
treatment; homosexuals could not be called "sodomites," they had to be
"homosexual activists." Wheeler reported trying to mix in other, more
provocative adjectives, with incomplete success.
Wheeler resisted many of these changes, but said he received no help from
Robertson or other leaders. He held to his model of readership as public and
commodity, emphasizing instruction to a passive audience in a text closed to
those without at least some initiation to evangelical Christianity (Eco, 1979).
This put him on a collision course with his publisher.
Reed apparently saw that this target audience was too small, although
Christian American circulation had grown from 50,000 for its first folio to
230,000 by early 1993. His rhetoric at the time looked toward a broader, more
secular audience, as did his publication schedule. The academic wrote "Casting
a Wider Net" for Policy Review that year, detailing his vision for safer
schools, fighting rising health care costs, and countering efforts to hike taxes
on families. Here he first prominently used "pro-family" to supplant "Christian
conservative" and other sectarian-sounding monikers. Soon out was Politically
Incorrect, where he advised against religious language to convey positions
(Reed, 1994).
The target for Reed, again, then, was the individual, the reader with
characteristics likely to be attractive to Republicans: GOP affiliation,
partisan, activist but not "radical," with certain aesthetic sensibilities
trending toward a "taste culture." Shying away from moral controversies and
oppositional language would seem to be appeals to favored communication styles
and a different notion of audience as public. By de-emphasizing sectarianism,
there was also a diffusion in his approach of Christian American audience as
social group, opening the text for reading by those less initiated to
evangelical Christianity, outside Wheeler's core (MacDonald and Silverstone,
1990).
The Saga of Christian American
-12-
This is not unusual for evangelical Christian media efforts, following along
the lines of religious book publishing and contemporary music (Ferr , 1990;
Romanowski, 1990). Taking the latter as a particularly strong example, Schultze
(1990) documented a dramatic rise in the number of evangelically minded radio
stations over the 1970s, but without a corresponding increase in the number of
listeners. The true audience for such a specific and pointed message was too
small to be commercially viable, he argued. This laid the groundwork for a
broadening of the content to be available to all listeners, a process that some
may see as stripping the original message of its meaning. To make the analogy
simple, there are few hit records that touch on specific issues; there are many
that talk about broad, non-controversial topics such as love, freedom, and aging
(Denisoff, 1983).
The question of whether Reed conceived the audience as more passive or more
active is a difficult one to answer. On one hand, he kept the tabloid format,
which would militate toward the injection of a powerful message to a passive
audience. On the other, he ended the more extreme forms of labeling of groups
and individuals in news stories, which would seem to indicate that he considered
those in his new audience conception to be capable of constructing alternate
meanings for the texts (Bennett and Woollacott, 1987).
The problem here is one of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), as an
organization has been sending out a pointed message and then changes it to a
broader, more general one. Some members of the audience are likely to be
disaffected or try to resolve the conflict; this is exactly what happened on the
staff of Christian American.
Connie Zhu, a charismatic Christian, came to Christian American as an intern in
mid-1992, and went full-time in January 1993. "I think they wanted to portray
some of the things that were really blatant, anti-Christian, anti-God," she
recalled (Zhu, 1998) of the time before the change. "They wanted to portray it
in such a way that people would maybe be a little shocked, [for] maybe some
Christians who were not aware of what was going on in the secular world." Her
statement backs the idea of appeal to a social group by Wheeler.
The Saga of Christian American
-13-
As the changes seeped through the small staff, Zhu found herself moving toward
more specialized reporting, often on less controversial topics. "John [Wheeler]
sort of leaned toward the educational end with me, because I'm a former teacher
... [also,] if there was someone I knew was going to be on 'The 700 Club,' he
would give us some leeway, and let us report things of interest to us," she
said. This was apparently the influence of Reed moving the paper toward a
"taste culture." Zhu reported she liked the move, as "it was evolving in the
sense that it was trying to encompass or bring in more people."
Barbara Woerner came to the newspaper in mid-1993 as a writer and
jack-of-all-trades, another graduate of Regent, a 41-year-old single mother
attending a charismatic church. Wheeler hired her for a short-term part-time
job, then she returned a month after it ended to do full-time work.
I, for one, did not like the way the paper looked. ... In the style of
a tabloid, it seemed kind of sensationalist, y'know. But it seemed
like right after the time they hired me, it had toned down and it
became more news, y'know. Connie [Zhu] was doin' a lot of three-
and four-part series on AIDS, HIV, Paul [English] did some good
stories, y'know, and every once in a while we did a story that raised
somebody's hackles, and that was always kind of fun, y'know, to
get the response (Woerner, 1997).
Woerner reported becoming friends with both English and Zhu, who shortly left
the paper. Zhu married and left with her new husband for China in March 1994 in
a change apparently unrelated to the shift in philosophy. English (1996),
however, said he was terminated over an alleged racist remark to an
African-American female, asking her how she liked being the "token black" in a
Christian Coalition recruiting film. He reported the complaint was filed not by
the woman but another female, and came after a comment by Reed that "The only
black family values are getting pregnant at 16 and going on welfare."
English (1996) said he was particularly offended by Reed's remark since the
staffer and his wife had just gone on a waiting list to adopt a black or
biracial baby. He lingered in "limbo" for six months until Reed finally
announced he would be fired, but with a "generous" severance package.
The Saga of Christian American
-14-
Interestingly, the incident came as the Coalition released (and Christian
American reported on) a telephone poll of 1,500 adults it commissioned from
Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates showing minorities to be more socially and
fiscally conservative than previously believed, setting up expanded minority
participation in the group (Wheeler and English, 1993).
Both Wheeler and Woerner felt that Reed now wanted Christian American to become
nothing more than an in-house organ of the group. "I think Ralph just wanted to
change the publication into something a little more slicker in format and look,
and I think he wanted something a little more contemporary, and I think he
wanted to be able to maybe use it in conjunction with a fund-raiser also,"
Woerner (1997) said.
Wheeler did not want to change. He began receiving articles from the newly
opened Washington, D.C. Christian Coalition office, pieces pertaining to family
tax relief or other secular-oriented topics. These Reed insisted on running.
Wheeler conceded office head Marshall Whittmann was a persuasive lobbyist, but
questioned his qualifications and motivations in an evangelical Christian
organization.
I have nothing against Orthodox Jews, but I wondered how someone
who is not even a professing Christian can effectively articulate Christian
values and Christian perspectives. Ralph ... thought it was a great coup
to be able to get Marshall because that would help to get the liberal media
to stop attacking Christian Coalition as if we were anti-Semitic (Wheeler,
1996).
Robertson apparently had become too involved in outside business to push for a
more specific message in the newspaper, and Wheeler found himself disputing with
Reed over use of Scripture, story selection, and authority in running the
publication. Several staffers said the editor's strong personality did not help
him; he often participated in spiritually oriented discussions with them, talks
that sometimes became heated. English (1996) thought Wheeler's strongly
charismatic beliefs affected his writing and news judgment, though the assistant
editor called him "one of the best writers and editors I ever met."
The Saga of Christian American
-15-
Half the staff, then, resolved its dissonance by embracing the change in
publication focus, while the other half resisted. It is perhaps unsurprising
this would break along gender lines, with differing perceptions of mission and
audience (Smith, 1987).
Some staffers believe there was a systematic effort to rid the paper of those
hired by Wheeler. "There was no doubt in my mind that Ralph had a timetable of
some sort of getting rid of the entire staff, replacing them with people who
would do exactly what he wanted them to do. ... There was a certain extent to
which we fought the changes he was making," English (1996) said. Woerner
disputed the notion of a plot, as did later editors.
There obviously was an effort to oust Wheeler. In 1994, Reed hired James
Wallis Jr. to become managing editor of the paper. Wheeler became senior editor
and ostensibly had final say on what went on the pages of Christian American,
but the chain of command was unclear to most in the small office. For instance,
both he and Wheeler claim to have made the next editorial staff hire (Wallis,
pers. com., 1998; Wheeler, 1996).
Jeff Peyton, a 27-year-old local newspaperman with a military background, was
hired early in 1994 to replace English. "It wasn't that somebody signed off on
everything," said Peyton (1997), a mainline Southern Baptist. "If you were in
charge of something, it was your project. Other times I would report to Jim for
things, other times John for things. ... I prefer a chain of command, a
delineation of authority."
The staff was busy doing more than cranking out nine-time-yearly copies of
Christian American, with a circulation of 353,000 by late 1994. The department
now also handled brochures, voter guides, special projects and direct mail
pieces for the Coalition. The tremendous workload proved too much for Wallis,
said some workers.
His background was TV, and he had said he had had some print
experience, and he probably has. ... But ... John was a good guy
with copy. ... Jim sometimes wasn't as, he never sometimes found
the fine details, so sometimes we would have errors in the print ...
that always used to upset me, 'cause I think if you're gonna put
something out ... you ought to have enough people to at least
proofread somethin' so you can catch the errors (Woerner, 1997).
The Saga of Christian American
-16-
This may have been one of the reasons Wheeler continued at the paper despite
the obvious attempt to cut his authority. Even in settings where oppositional
news is produced, there frequently are certain standards and conventions that
must be observed (Eliasoph, 1997). Research has also found that many in-house
publication editors aspire to high levels of journalistic integrity and
performance (Ranly, 1979). Wallis remained at the paper for only a year, going
back to Robertson's CBN, then on to an international maker of training and
instructional films (Wallis, 1998).
The paper continued to move on seemingly contradictory but eventually
intersecting tracks through 1994, as the proportion of Scripture references per
story increased while stories became more directed toward mainstream issues such
as crime, taxes and health care. Most religious references came in "taste
culture" feature articles devoted to an athlete's conversion to Christianity or
a Christian singer's testimony, but the proportion of such mentions decreased in
political stories (Huckins, 1996).
Wheeler finally left Christian American in March 1995, after intermittently
assisting with the production of the paper and continuing to sell advertising to
the usual assortment of conservative and Christian booksellers, religious rights
groups, and cure-all medicine clearinghouses. The headline cheered as
Republican "Freshmen Storm the Hill," and articles profiled GOP strategist Bill
Kristol and the prospects for a balanced budget amendment. Wheeler's farewell
column, "Redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb," gave a distinctly Christian touch
to a secularly dominated issue. "You have no idea who I really am," he wrote.
"And I want you to know before I leave, primarily as a testimony to the
sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ" (Wheeler, 1995: 29). Colleagues reported
that the editor received a substantial severance package.
Thus, Reed had taken action to ensure his view of the audience would be the
guiding mission of the publication. The text would be open, the audience active
but not limited to a social group, though sharing some elements of "taste
culture" in common.
The Saga of Christian American
-17-
The firing also provides some evidence that conflict will be limited in
in-house publication settings. Bantz (1997) has argued that television
newsrooms, for example, promote and even reward conflict, but, in this case,
conflict was tolerated for only a time. It could be that the journalistic
flavor in this organization was too subsidiary to business or political concerns
to truly promote conflict.
As Wheeler exited, Peyton began to take a more prominent role in the production
of the newspaper. He had played his hand judiciously, using the sources the
Coalition's political officials suggested and staying away from those whom they
discouraged. "I generally, in the interest of not ticking anybody off and
getting my position as assistant editor down, when someone who doesn't know you
gives you advice, you tend to take it," Peyton (1997) said.
Fresh from secular newspapers, Peyton had suggested the paper follow the
Associated Press Stylebook. While he made exceptions for designations in the
abortion debate which he felt were biased, he made a case for advancing the
professionalism and worldly impact of the publication.
One, I thought the newspaper required some kind of editorial style
except whatever was on the editor's mind at the time. ... The second
thing was, as a publication of a political organization, the media will
tend to look at what we do. The Christian American may as well be
one huge press release to some people. So I felt like if the national
media, two-thirds of which use the AP Styleguide [sic] look at this,
we will gain more respectability and more credibility in the mainstream
media by adopting the same standards reporters everywhere are using
(Peyton, 1997).
Christian American was clearly moving from a consumer magazine to a house
organ, with a low degree of independence from the religiously oriented body
owning it, in the typology of religious media by Board (1990). This type of
publication tends to have a great amount of deference to its readers, as per
Peyton's example of shifting to the AP standards to match preferences of the
perceived audience. This is a marked change from the "alternative" vision
Wheeler had early in the paper's life.
The Saga of Christian American
-18-
Mike Ebert became the new editor of Christian American in 1995, coming to the
Christian Coalition from Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family, where the
30-year-old headed Citizen magazine, the enterprise's flagship publication.
Citizen was a slick magazine, and Christian American followed suit two issues
after Ebert started work.
Christian Coalition leaders "kicked around the idea of keeping the similar
format but going with higher-quality paper and going for a more sophisticated
look that way," Ebert (1997) said of the change. "We had a couple of focus
groups take a look at the publication and give us some feel for what they liked
about it, what they felt could use some changing and give us their thoughts on a
newspaper as it was versus a magazine."
Ebert and Peyton suggested that the focus groups and the new editor's
background had much to do with the move to a glossy magazine, but Woerner, still
at Christian American then, doubted the conventional wisdom. She said that Jeff
Cline, formerly with Kenneth Copeland, a major charismatic televangelist, had
been hired as a graphic artist several months prior to the change, and was in
charge of the redesign. She hinted Reed may have made the call (Woerner, 1997).
Woerner was laid off from Christian American a few issues after Ebert began
work. She said she had one major disagreement with him, but it was unrelated to
her departure. The writer felt that Ebert didn't want to terminate her, but
money was simply too tight at Coalition headquarters for her to stay (Woerner,
1997). Other staffers, including English (1996), speculated that since she was
the last of Wheeler's hires, she had to go.
Christian American had come full circle. It now had to pay its own way,
meaning audience as market and, more specifically, as commodity had taken a
newfound prominence. Bringing in numbers of subscribers to spur advertising,
and seeking specific demographics, such as the upscale reader, also had more
importance (Ebert, 1997). The idea of audience as public or social group was
definitely on the wane, while the taste culture was on the rise.
The Saga of Christian American
-19-
Ebert (a Southern Baptist2) and Peyton by fall 1997 were the only
Coalition-employed members of the magazine editorial staff, and neither did a
large amount of writing. Most of the pieces were assigned to free-lancers
across the country who tended to specialize in reporting on particular subjects,
say, medicine or health. Compared to the early days of Christian American,
relatively few articles dealt directly with controversial matters; many were
about what Ebert (1997) called "kitchen-table issues," marriage, personal
finance, and other aspects of "Christian living."
Ebert used a March/April 1997 article on euthanasia as an example of his
approach. Avoiding the exploits of Jack Kevorkian and reaction of the American
Medical Association, it told of a woman whose father was dying of cancer and had
asked family members to let him die only to have them refuse. "That kind of
approach gets really at where people live, and appeals to not just their minds
or their public policy side, but to their hearts or emotion as well," Ebert
(1997) said. "I think an important thing for the pro-family movement to
remember is we have to be real, we have to relate to people at their level where
they exist."
Each issue's articles were decided in close consultation with Reed, now
involved on the front end as well as back end of the production process. "The
longer we've worked together, the more I'm able to have a feel for what kinds of
things he's looking for. ... He sees proofs of everything that goes out," Ebert
(1997) said. "All I can say truthfully is Ralph and I have never had any
serious disagreements about anything that's gone into the magazine." The editor
saw as priorities covering core constituencies, speaking with one voice for the
Coalition, and emphasizing issues prioritized by the Washington, D.C. office.
Gone in 1997 issues were the church/state separation articles grouped under
"Battlefront." Such pieces were now scattered on separate pages under the
heading "Hear & There." Half-page and full-page color ads dominated many leafs,
with more mainstream, widely known Christian companies taking up space alongside
some of the old medicine-sellers.
The Saga of Christian American
-20-
Gone also was the sometimes-strong language in the public policy debate. For
instance, on abortion, "We refer to them as a pro-lifer. So that's kind of a
different use of words you might see if you picked up your local paper or
a[nother] magazine. But I really try to keep things like that to a minimum. I
think you lose a lot of credibility if you just throw around a lot of rhetoric,"
Ebert (1997) said. This is, again, an opening of the text to diverse groups,
and a diffusion of audience as social group.
Both Ebert and Peyton, who in interviews often used the same metaphors and
examples, acknowledged the magazine's focus as substantially different from the
tabloid Christian American. They insisted, however, that the change in image
was not one from strong Christianity to weak, but to stay in tune with an
expanding and evolving Coalition.
We personify family values. ... Image is definitely not what a tabloid
newspaper is. It's almost unfair to compare the two. You wouldn't
compare the New York Post to Newsweek. ...As a direct-mail piece,
it obviously was trying to attract membership. ... As a tabloid newspaper,
it was much more of an activist vehicle. ... CA the magazine, we've got
your attention. You're paying a lot of money to subscribe to the magazine.
... We're not on a newsstand. We don't need to be big and flashy. ...
People are coming to us because they want our information. ... We're
trying to put things in the writing style, the art style that our audience
asked for, in our focus groups and letters to the editor. If there's a comma
in the wrong place, we get letters (Peyton, 1997).
Peyton's statement reveals several facets of his view of the audience. First,
he acknowledged the move from passive acceptance of the message during tabloid
days to that of an active audience using the magazine's "information." The
audience was seen as more powerful now, the subject of focus groups and changes
to style. These are also elements of a taste culture. The openness of the text
came in its appeal to "family values," rather than "Christian" values.
Peyton (1997) saw the magazine's status as largest in the commercial Christian
market as a sign the Coalition was hitting its goal, and that Ralph Reed
appeared in John F. Kennedy Jr.'s George a shine on the organization's profile.
Ironically, the magazine's circulation was less than two years previous, at
341,000, down from about 400,000.
The Saga of Christian American
-21-
Reader polls in 1994 and 1995 showed little change in the composition of the
reading audience, still generally white, conservative Protestants somewhat
higher in education than average, somewhat more affluent (Boston, 1996). Ebert
(1997) clearly saw the target readership as upscale, professional and well
educated.
Former assistant editor English (1996) was unsurprised at the results of the
series of changes at Christian American.
They were going towards what they've got now ... a thick,
glossy magazine. Now you read stories in Christian American
about 'back-to-school days.' It's more fluff. It's nicer, maybe.
You don't read about homosexuals copulating in the streets of
Washington, D.C., even though they're still doing it.
Ebert left Christian American in late 1997 to work for the Southern Baptist
Convention media department. Coalition leaders hired writer Stacy Mattingly to
be the new editor, and announced former Time correspondent David Aikman would
become senior consulting editor.
However, Christian Coalition and Christian American were hemorrhaging badly.
The parent organization's fund-raising was down close to 80 percent, with
thousands of dollars a day in shortfalls under leaders Don Hodel and Randy Tate,
who replaced Ralph Reed when he went into private political consulting earlier
in the year. Sources inside the organization estimated the magazine was losing
$20,000 per issue, with a past-due bill of $400,000.
Interviews with organization insiders indicated that Reed, still a Christian
Coalition board member, supported the termination of Christian American at an
emergency meeting called to bring the budget into balance. The week before
Christmas 1997, publication division employees were told to clean out their
desks, some losing their accrued leave time. Only Peyton was left, a director
of publications without a publication to direct.
John Wheeler, the former editor, had a revealing lament for his work of nearly
eight years.
The Saga of Christian American
-22-
I'd go through airports, and see all the various publications on the
newsstands, and I would think, There's Rolling Stone, there's Mother
Jones, all these publications here for the left, y'know. We have a niche.
We are the Christian right, we are the Christian Americans, we are the
people who have this world view. If we could just be something more
than propaganda for Christian Coalition. If they would just let me.
(Wheeler, 1998).
His view of the passivity of audience and rigidity of the social group are
implicit in his statement. Meanwhile, English looked at the situation
philosophically.
On one hand it's journalism, but on the other hand, it's not. It was
the publication of a political ministry organization. It's not like World
magazine, which is a stand-alone journalistic publication. It was always
an arm of the Christian Coalition and supported by it. It never made it on
its own, of course, but it took USA Today 10 years to break even. It's
strange because it was never independent ... We were the premium you
got for membership, so we had to be writing for that membership. Of
course, what John [Wheeler] and I thought the membership wanted was
much different than what Ralph [Reed] thought it wanted (English, 1998).
At the end of the battle over Christian American, nobody won, and there was no
audience.
Analysis
The changing conceptions of the role of message sender and receiver, or
communicator and audience, are fascinating and complex in the case of Christian
American. The dearth of literature about in-house publications and their
sociological compositions makes it difficult to know whether such
transformations fit into a broad pattern for this niche in publishing, but the
territory covered in this case study certainly touches on several well-defined
aspects of the study of audiences.
The original plan for Christian American seemed to be a patrician one, in which
the organization, through the newspaper, would determine which issues needed
activism, and which views were representative of the "Christian" positions on
said issues. Audience members were to sit back, read, and be instructed. These
were not just any people, either, as a strongly Christian framework attempted to
ensure that the audience would be a cohesive social group.
The Saga of Christian American
-23-
This was an interesting position for Christian Coalition, since its announced
goal was grassroots activism and local control of chapters (Coalition, 1995).
It is not unlike the French salons of the 18th century, in which elites
discussed politics and other social affairs, providing leadership in public
opinion (Herbst and Beniger, 1994). The concept emphasized the media as active,
and while pushing the audience to become active itself, envisioned consumers of
the messages as passive, since they would not try to "read" the text in a
different construction than delivered (Bennett, 1996).
The philosophy seemed doomed from the beginning since there was an undercurrent
from Pat Robertson seeking a broad audience for the publication, large enough to
be unlikely to activate in response to a top-down message. While the Christian
American subscription list continued to grow, it never came close to his hopes,
nor evidently was there any strong, systematic effort to sell the paper outside
of Coalition channels, thus constricting the audience.
The 1992 elections showed that the true audience for the "pure" Christian
Coalition message was relatively small. Thus, Coalition leader Ralph Reed
sought to change the product to conform to the mass audience he sought instead
of seeking to transform that audience, mimicking the process already undergone
by the Christian music industry (Romanowski, 1990). The fact he took his cues
from outside occurrences rather than the newspaper audience is a clue as to his
differences in philosophy with Wheeler, his editor.
The difficulty with this was that staffers at the tabloid newspaper had their
own oppositional readings and actions to greet the change in philosophy from
emphasizing the separateness of the message to its increased inclusiveness, an
"opening" of the text. Even as the operation of the paper became more top-down
in the organization, it shifted to a more audience-driven formulation in its
content. Festinger's dissonance theory (1957) virtually dictated change in the
Coalition to adjust to these divergent philosophies, interference ultimately
resolved by removing oppositional readings of group positions.
The Saga of Christian American
-24-
In the final stage of change in Christian American, the tabloid metamorphosized
into its very antithesis, a glossy magazine. This came after focus groups of
the paper's readers emphasized appealing to the audience and giving it what it
wanted (Ebert, 1997; Peyton, 1997). While requiring the audience to do less in
terms of actual activism, the readership had gained a significant amount of
power on the text, in essence helping formulate it. Thus, the audience would
have to be conceived as more active under this model, as well as more open, with
a great amount of the syntax and world view behind messages removed to broaden
appeal and consumption.
The problem with this relatively new vision for Christian American was that
its pages were now market-driven, not only in their composition but also their
advertising. The magazine had to support itself, although no effort was made to
make it available to broad audiences in the context of newsstands or the like.
The lack of strong identification with a specific social group hurt the
publication, now a relatively mild-toned vehicle for Coalition concerns with
little potential for activism (audience as public) or widening subscriptions,
and thus, apt to lose money. That it did, and, apparently, is why it is no
longer published today.
Notes
1 Reed told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot in 1991: "I want to be invisible. I
do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's
over until you're in a body bag" (Edsall, 1993, p. A16).
2 Ebert was extremely reluctant to discuss his personal religious views,
especially with regard to whether or not he considered himself either
charismatic or fundamentalist in theology. "Both have negative connotations
these days. But I would describe myself very much as a Protestant evangelical,"
he said, noting while he now attended a Southern Baptist church, he had belonged
to a number of different churches throughout his life.
The Saga of Christian American
-25-
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