Reading through the 1400 responses to the Southern Cross survey over the past few weeks, one comment stood out: "80% of the newspaper is padding… jettison Halcrow".
I may have been more personally offended if I wasn't the editor responsible for the other 20 percent as well!
But the comment did remind me that there for there is a fine line between critical feedback that is discouraging and that which builds us up and helps us improve.
Criticism is unlikely to be heard and acted on if it’s not properly contextualised.
So how does Southern Cross determine what is constructive criticism and how should we respond?
Overall picture
Overall, our reader feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with less that 0.03% of the sample making negative comments about Southern Cross.
(The bulk of comments were suggestions about a way forward. The ratio of praise to criticism of the existing Southern Cross was 10:1)
The most common comment from readers was that they are 'saddened' by news of the impact of the financial downturn on Southern Cross with one asking "How did it come to this?".
Here is a typical sample of comments, showing the high esteem with which many readers hold the publication:
"I am a conservative Christian reader in the USA. yours is one of the best Christian publications."
"Over the last few years there has been some great SC editions. Thanks for all your hard work."
"I am a Churches of Christ minister. and think SC is the best denominational paper around."
"It must not be an end. It is the only literature coming to our church that gets snapped up completely."
"This is the best magazine of its type I've seen anywhere in the world"
"I read the SMH, Australian, Illawarra Mercury and Fin Review. and appreciated the quality of SC"
The extent to which Southern Cross has built a place as the premier tool for communicating the Diocese's mission goals has been very heartening.
In our earlier survey of clergy, more than 60 percent of rectors said that Southern Cross had proved to be the best tool for promoting Connect09.
Likewise in the reader survey, there were many comments that demonstrated the effectiveness of the paper as a tool for supporting the Diocesan Mission:
"It's a valuable resource for my ministry role"
"It helps me see outside my parish and understand the Diocese's goals"
"News about successes and failures [in ministry] around the Diocese is beyond price - for encouragement and for vital horizon raising."
"For those of us in 'fringe' churches SC is an important encouragement and valuable link to God's work in Sydney."
Those who don't read
The reader survey was also helpful in providing over 50 comments from people who rarely or never usually read Southern Cross. We knew from the 2006 National Church Life Survey that 25 percent of Sydney Anglicans (15,000 people) never read Southern Cross. Here is an opportunity to gain an insight into the reasons they avoid our publication.
The comments from some of these people suggest that lack of promotion may be a key reason why around a quarter of Sydney Anglicans do not read the publication.
Another group of 'non-readers' are those - often younger or newly converted Christians - looking for a publication that is full of testimonies and evangelistic Bible teaching. They are turned off by Anglican Church ‘politics’ that dominates the early pages of Southern Cross.
The way this group feels about the existing Southern Cross was summed up bluntly by one respondent: "Do you ever think to put articles about God in your paper?".
This is a slightly unfair comment given we have been publishing a Bible Study series based on The Essential Jesus in every edition this year - but I can see where that comment is coming from.
However, given that only 15% of Sydney Anglicans say they would read an evangelistically focused publication, it is not financially viable for us to move Southern Cross in that direction.
Into the future, we may look at serving this group better by partnering with like-minded organisations in providing evangelistically focused small format supplement magazines.
However the real surprise was that even amongst this non-reading group a mere 13 people made negative comments about the format or content.
Angry Anglicans
Although complaints were few and far between, the most commonly expressed criticism was that Southern Cross did not fairly report on 'traditional Anglican' churches in the Diocese.
Comments included that Southern Cross was 'biased against traditional Anglican churches' and that the paper publishes too much 'extreme Calvinism'.
The following examples give the vibe:
"What a misguided sense of entitlement Anglican Media must have to even consider they have a right to levy parishes in order to maintain this university-campus rag. The Archbishop can condescend to speak to us directly in churches."
"I feel annoyed with SC that you exclude letters that differ from the party line".
"The media unit should project a more inclusive image and dispense with the bias and triumphalism."
"I consider SC a parochial propaganda machine. it has no news about any other denomination or Diocese.""The bias and attitude of SC suggests it should be terminated"
Many of these respondents repeated the same refrain: Southern Cross is biased against 'traditional Anglican churches'. The use of this phrase caught me short.
Can that really be true?
And then I came across a comment that seemed to put this complaint into a more helpful context:
"I want more news from traditional Anglican churches, not just church plants"
So it appears that some of this anger is being driven by a sense that their faithful churches and ministries are not being properly respected and honoured in the pages of Southern Cross. All the glory goes to the young and fresh and shiny and new.
That said, I suspect that some of this 'anger' rises from the grief our older members are experiencing because of the unstoppable fact that the 'English' Church they grew up with is now lost:
"I have been disappointed by the content of SC over the past two years. It seems to be aimed at people under 25."
"There is too much stuff about young people. Too much Chinese."
So one question is: how do we honour and respect our elders, without losing sight of the mission imperative of the future?
I also note that today Dean Jensen has a few things about both the usefulness and problems with labels. In some ways in this blog I am seeking us to reflect on the flip-side. How do we respond when we feel labels are misapplied to us?
It is interesting that in the recent market research conducted on the ‘Sydney Anglican’ brand the general public see us as ‘non-threatning’. This is not a label that is usually associated with this Diocese!
