Worldwide Faith News History

Worldwide Faith News (WFN) is an official news release database project on behalf of faith groups around the world it. It was originally administered by the Communication Commission, National Council of the Churches of Christ, in the USA and is now maintained independently.

The posting of news releases and other documents is open to all world and national faith group organizations, is it not limited to members of the National Council of Churches.

Worldwide Faith News is a World Wide Web site on the Internet. Begun on December 24, 1995 it serves as a global archive resource containing news releases, policy statements and other official documents from national and global faith organizations, denominations, ecumenical agencies, and other groups. Users can search the full text of all documents in the archive.

WFN is intended to be a resource for journalists, academics, religious leaders, clergy and lay people. It is available without charge to Internet users. All documents posted are in the public domain and may be reproduced or quoted.

Origins

Beginning in 1986 the users of Ecunet, the ecumenical computer network, watched the growing database of news releases and other resources in Ecunet's denominational and agency news release meetings.

In October 1992, during the Ecunet/CamCon IV (Computer Applications for Ministry) conference in Dayton, Ohio, a number of models for wider access to the news databases were explored. The National Council of Churches (USA) Communication Commission began studying means of making a global interfaith news release database available to journalists, religion leaders, university and seminary faculty and others.

Feasibility Study

In 1994 a feasibility study funded by the Trinity Grants Program of was conducted. It included interviews and/or surveys with the following groups of people and other resources: journalists (religion writers and secular), journalism school faculty, news directors for denominational and ecumenical organizations, Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, journalism and Internet related publications, WWW sites and site developers.

Among the religion organizations surveyed were national and global denominational news offices, the Christian Council of Asia, World Council of Churches, Consejo Latinoamericano de Iglesias, and the South African Council of Churches.

1994 Study Findings

  • A quantum shift in the training and qualification of journalists in CARR (computer assisted research and reporting) and the use of rapidly evolving Internet tools and resources for research.
  • Strong immediate interest on the part of journalists and news directors in some form of "religion wire" on the Internet; particularly a searchable full text online database consisting of news releases, policy statements and other documents.
  • Strong immediate interest among the news and communication directors of denominations and religion organizations in making their news releases and other documents more widely available on the Internet
  • An exponential increase in the number of government, corporate, non-profit and other organization Internet sites, providing news release resources, online databases, and audio and video clips.
  • A global proliferation of millions of Web home pages, among them many denominational and faith group official and "unofficial" home pages.

The WFN Design

  • The initial 1995 Internet site was leased from a ISP vendor, with an appropriate suite of server tools including gopher WAIS, the Verity search engine and a Majordomo mailing list server. Graphic and plain text interfaces were available. Three possible ISP vendors were identified during the feasibility study. All were non-profit organizations. The Institute for Global Communication (IGC) in San Francisco was selected as the vendor for initial WFN development.
  • The WFN.ORG Internet domain is an official news release archive for the participating organizations. It will not carry the identify of any single organization. The "sponsorship" and administration are clearly stated on the home pages.
  • WFN provides free access for any Internet user, following the evolving Internet access protocols.
  • WFN was initially designed with the Verity search engine to meet the expectations of journalists and other researchers by following the standards of existing commercial, governmental and other sites on the Web.
  • The WFN.ORG home pages will have links to the Internet sites and official home pages of denominations and other faith organizations. They in turn will have links to WFN for news resources. National and International faith group and denominational sites are expected to grow rapidly.
  • WFN provides a global mailing list religion "news-wire" carrying releases from all participants, using a Majordomo listserver. A series of of other mailing lists may be considered based on topics, denominations, organizations. Multilingual service is included in the design, present languages are English, German, French and Spanish.
  • WFN is designed as a low maintenance system and does not provide any form of editorial service. Documents from participating organizations will be indexed, forwarded to the Majordomo mailing list server and archived exactly as received.
  • The news release document archive is maintained automatically. It is full text indexed daily to include each day's additions. Full text searches, are done, originally using the ht://Dig open source search engine and now using Google News Search.

Management of WFN

Initially the NCCC Communication Commission managed WFN, in consultation with the WFN Advisory Group, as administrator of the start-up and development grants from the Trinity Grants Program of Trinity Church (Episcopal) in New York City.

The WFN Advisory Group of participating denomination and agency representatives then took on a larger role. An initial meeting was held May 22, 1995 during Ecunet '95 Conference in Baltimore. The group met twice each year following that meeting for approximately 15 years. The Advisory Group developed news release style sheets, a WFN standards and practices document, and membership policies.

Since 2011, George Conklin, WFN Project Director and one of the original founders, has kept WFN going with website support from Cam Howard.

Funding

The feasibility study was funded by a grant from the Trinity Grants Program. A second grant from the Program has provided the costs of WFN system design, vendor selection and start-up expenses. WFN is particularly appreciative of the support and advice of Odessa Elliott of the Trinity Grants Program.

In-kind support was provided by the NCCC Communication Commission and other participants in WFN. The initial funding supported 12-18 months of operation continuing through 1998. After that the low maintenance costs were designed to be shared among the participants on an equitable basis.

Since 2011, the site has been funded by George Conklin with in-kind support from Cam Howard.

Information Contacts

George Conklin, WFN Project Director

J. Martin Bailey, WFN Development Director

Wesley M. (Pat) Pattillo, Director of the Communication Commission, National Council of Churches USA

This page is based on a flier distributed at the Religion Newswriters Association Annual Meeting, Evanston, IL, August 31, 1996 with a few revisions to bring it up to date since then.

Note: The original project name, Global Ecumenical Newsroom (GEN), was changed to Worldwide Faith News as more inclusive of world faith groups