Bill Mitchell

A journalist and teacher, Bill has made stops along the way at the Detroit Free Press, TIME, the San Jose Mercury News, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Harvard's Shorenstein Center, Northeastern University and the National Catholic Reporter. From 2013-2015, Bill and his wife, Carol, lived at the Beacon Hill Friends House and wrote about their experiences on A Year in a Room.  From 2105 until mid 2021, they lived across the hall from their daughter and family and posted occasionally to Across The Hall. They currently share a two-family house with their daughter and family in Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood. 

National Catholic Reporter •

Two new books look inside The Washington Post and The New York Times

Collision of Power is an apt title for the new memoir by journalist Martin Baron, and not just the collision of "Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post" highlighted in the subtitle. Baron, who retired as executive editor of the Post in February 2021, provides a participant's account of the forces buffeting news organizations everywhere. He puts a face — often his own — on the clash of print and digital platforms; the tensions between social
National Catholic Reporter •

Enlarge the tent: A mandate for NCR as well as the church

Two time periods, each filled with energy and challenge, stand out for me over the course of NCR's 58-year history. The first was immediately following the Second Vatican Council, an era recalled by founding editor Bob Hoyt as ideal for the launch of the nation's first independent source of news about the Catholic church... The second period of NCR history that I want to spotlight is right now...
National Catholic Reporter •

A note from the publisher

When I wrote my first story for the National Catholic Reporter as a college freshman in 1967, I certainly had no idea I'd end up as its publisher and CEO a half century later. When I accepted the position two years ago, I told the board I would serve until my 75th birthday, with the goal of helping the board identify a longer-term publisher to lead NCR into the second half of its first century. Although my 75th birthday is a year off, NCR is on a positive trajectory and now is the time to begin...
National Catholic Reporter •

Catholic News Service shutdown is about more than just the news

In announcing the elimination of the domestic operations of Catholic News Service May 4, the American bishops delivered a brutally blunt message: The work of these lay journalists, at least in the view of the bishops, is expendable. James Rogers, the bishops' chief communications officer, delivered the news to CNS staff without any prior consultation or discussion with them. So much for synodal listening.
National Catholic Reporter •

Listening, investigating, reporting: A message from Francis and an invitation to readers

In the summer of 1964, when NCR co-founder Robert Hoyt was making the case for a Catholic newspaper independent of church control, he distributed a flyer re-printing a treatise on freedom of the Catholic press by theologian and Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray. Murray argued that any "well-ordered society" — secular or religious — requires unfettered access to what's really going on. And that, of course, requires freedom for journalists to dig up the truth and share it with readers without fear o
National Catholic Reporter •

James Carroll's book outlines struggling relationship with Catholic Church

Catholics of a certain age and outlook, like many of NCR's readers, will find in James Carroll's latest book, The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul — A Memoir of Faith, a useful framing of our relationship with the church. I'm thinking, especially, of Catholics encouraged by the inclusiveness and compassion exhibited by Pope Francis but confounded by a church that remains bogged down by clericalism and resistant to reforms already too long delayed.
National Catholic Reporter •

Asking for a friend: Can a Catholic vote for Biden?

It comes up in phone calls and email exchanges: "Given his support for legal abortion, can a faithful Catholic vote for Joe Biden?" Both of us have fielded questions like that in recent weeks. Maybe you have, too. The short answer is "Yes." The longer answer relies on a combination of church teaching and the conscience of individual Catholics. But you might not know that to hear from some priests, politicians and prelates, not to mention other Catholic media and an occasional former college football coach.
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