In the build-up to the big celebration, OSV President and Publisher Greg Erlandson has written the cover story for the September issue of The Priest magazine about Our Sunday Visitor's plans for its next 100 years. Here's an excerpt:
"Our Sunday Visitor’s mission as a publisher will be shaped and impacted by the phenomenal changes taking place in technology. Because the pace of change is accelerating, guessing what the future holds reminds me of the answer that would occasionally surface when we as kids asked questions of the Magic 8-Ball: “Reply hazy, try again.”
"I doubt that in the world of communications media there has been a time of such profound change and turmoil since the birth of the printing press. In the last decade, we have seen the proliferation of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the founding of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, eHarmony and hundreds of thousands of other Internet enterprises; the invention of the data phone and the iPad and all of the phenomenal technology that supports those devices. The list goes on and on and on: eReaders, Amazon, Netflix, streaming video, apps, iPods. Our world has been wholly re-imagined and reinvented in our lifetime. If the Chinese curse is, “May you live in interesting times,” then someone has inflicted on us the mother of all curses.
"Yet at the same time as all this disruptive change has been taking place, those of us in the vocation and profession of communications have been given new ways of reaching our audiences. If Archbishop Noll were alive today, I do not think he would be blind to the dangers, but he would be excited by the opportunities of these new tools and new media.
"In looking to where Our Sunday Visitor is heading at the dawn of our second century, it is important to address the intersection of technology and mission and how our company will continue to serve the Church by forming and informing Catholics and defending the faith. On the one hand, technology alone is not a silver bullet, and each new invention should not be seen as some sort of communications Second Coming. On the other hand, the Church has always adopted new inventions and discoveries in order to accomplish its mission of saving souls."
Read the rest of Erlandson's piece HERE.
