Tuesday, April 19, 2005
The Vatican and B2B
The business trip I was on last week is relevant to today's big news, in that I was in Rome, at the Vatican, coordinating some of the coverage of the Papal election for my client Religion News Service (the only secular wire service focused exclusively on religion news).We had originally intended to go to Rome to attend a Vatican media conference, put together by my friend Gunther Lawrence, where senior Vatican officials and Amerucan newspaper reporters would discuss various and sundry issues, but really, I think, intended to expose the American media to the Vatican and vice-versa. With the death of the Pope, most of the agenda was thrown out, but it was still an interesting conference--a chance for a Church in transition to meet with media people who, given their American roots, might not be very sympathetic with a variety of the orthodox positions of the Church. I think both sides learned a lot.
My wife, Rene, accompanied me as a photojournalist for RNS--with the goal of building the RNS photo library with Vatican images. Kevin Eckstrom, our talented associate editor, and Catholic beat reporter, was also there, filling in his awesome work on the death of John Paul II, and preparing our correspondents in Rome for the Conclave and the new Pope.
We had some amazing opportunities--covering a protest of Cardinal Law's memorial mass by a group which represents children abused by priests, and watching (and shooting) the president of that group being escorted off the grounds of St. Peters, as well as meeting the Gammarelli family, tailors to six Popes, and the ones who created the outfit that new Pope Benedict XVI wore today. We chatted with American Cardinal Keeler, a wonderful man, and chased Cardinal Egan--who's more than a little media shy--until we felt like religion paparazzi. We toured inside Vatican city, where Cardinals were milling about--the city was lousy with 'em!. And Rene had the opportunity to shoot one of the memorial masses inside St. Peter's, with every voting Cardinal in the world in attendance (see her pic, above--and others at RNS's photo website). A sea of red in a pretty impressive cathedral.
Of all my clients, RNS is the most unusual, in that it's a consumer newswire. But our customers are media businesses--newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, websites. So my role is a b2b one, marketing and selling this service to media people. It's a wonderful news service, which faces interesting biases wherever it turns. Because it covers religion, it's viewed with suspicion by many consumer editors, who expect us to be whackos. And because it covers all religion equally, it's viewed with more suspicion (and some threats of eternal damnation) by certain religions who don't think other religions are valid.
But through it all, RNS and its fine team of editors, correspondents and businesspeople, provides something unique and quite wonderful.
And for my wife and me, last week was a historic journey to the heart of a religion which commands the faith of 1/6th of the world's population (we're not Catholic, by the way).
More of Rene's photos will be posted to RNS over the next few weeks. And RNS will be covering the implications for the Church of the new Pope in the weeks ahead. There's a free e-newsletter you can subscribe to if you like; the link is on the RNS home page.
