Wanted: editor with relish for holy circulation war

Tycoon Conrad Black (right) is determined to revive religious journalism for Catholics, writes Clare Garner

PERHAPS she reminded him that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Or perhaps she simply was not good enough.

Either way, Deborah Jones has suffered the wrath of the newspaper tycoon and Catholic convert Conrad Black, who has sacked her as editor of the Catholic Herald, in which he has a 20 per cent stake.

Miss Jones's departure, after less than two years in the editor's chair, is the latest development in the long-running battle for the hearts and souls of Britain's dwindling Catholic readership. Although no audit is conducted, the Herald's circulation is rumoured to have slipped to an all-time low of 12,000. At its peak in the 1950s the figure was 100,000.

The previous editor, Cristina Odone, now deputy editor of the New Statesman, was credited with turning the Herald into a trendy read. She had a gift for getting high-profile names on board, persuading them to write for a pittance, and was known to Cardinal Basil Hume as "The Odd One", perhaps on account of her statement: "My God, I'd love to have sex 9,000 times a day with 6,000 people."

Miss Jones, 50, arrived with scant journalistic experience and a far quieter social CV than her predecessor. She had once thought she might become a nun and lived with her elderly mother in Newmarket. Her main claim to fame was that she had written a seminal work on adult education, in which she wrote: "Love, for a Christian, is not a game, a contest or a chance to dominate."

Mr Black, the owner of the Daily Telegraph, who is understood to be planning a relaunch for the Herald, bought his stake in the broadsheet four years ago. He was encouraged to do so by his good friend Rocco Forte, who also has shares in it. One journalist described Mr Black's investment as "mainly an act of Catholic piety", given the financial state of the paper.

"I welcome the role that Conrad is taking on," said Ms Odone, "which is simply to try and find the best journalist he can who cares about Catholicism and put him or her at the helm. He wants a newspaper with proper journalists writing for it and a strong voice. He wants to open up the newspaper which, right now, is a little bit too parochial and provincial in its outlook."

Mr Black's increasingly keen interest in the flagging Herald coincides with the impending retirement of Otto Herschan, chairman of the independent trust that owns the paper. Miss Jones was Mr Herschan's choice. She did not apply for the job, but was headhunted. One former senior Herald employee who preferred not to be named is not alone in feeling that Miss Jones has been treated "shabbily". "They shouldn't have appointed her in the first place if they were seriously worried about somebody's lack of journalistic background," he said.

Some argue that there is no future in religious newspapers. Catholic papers are sold in the main at the church porch and with fewer and fewer Catholics attending Mass, it follows that fewer will be picking up a paper. As one Catholic journalist put it: "If people are not interested enough to go to Church, presumably they are not going to be interested enough to be reading about it." Another distribution pitfall in this eccentric corner of the publishing market is that if the paper happens to offend a parish priest, he won't stock it.

Others say the decline in sales of Catholic newspapers is "ridiculously sharp" compared to the decline in the size of the community. The Universe, a tabloid which majors in travel features on Lourdes and series on the lives of saints, has a larger budget and a readership which it claims is around 100,000. However, it is not run as a commercial venture.

So infuriated was The Universe management at Ms Odone's successful marketing of the Herald, that in 1993 they launched a spoiler, the weekly Catholic Times. It has attracted some 20,000 readers, yet many of these appear to have been at the expense of its sister paper The Universe rather than the Herald.

The only success story in the Catholic market is The Tablet, a weekly review which, like the Herald and The Universe, has been around since the 19th century. The difference is that The Tablet is regarded as an international and intellectual read which appeals to Anglicans as well as Catholics. Its circulation - the only independently audited figure in the market - is 20,000.

Despite such an unpromising-sounding market, Ms Odone believes the Herald has the potential to be "just wonderful". It is a "very, very important newspaper" with a "terribly, terribly faithful" readership, she said. And Mr Black is "shrewd enough to tap into it".

Names in the frame for editor include Clifford Longley, the doyen of religious reporting, and William Oddie, the author and Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism. Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph, is understood to have been instructed by Mr Black to seek out likely candidates from his editorial floor. Among Mr Moore's favourites are said to be David Twiston-Davies, the Telegraph's letters editor, and Damien Thompson, its former religious affairs correspondent. Both are Catholics. Mr Twiston- Davies, however, when contacted by the Independent on Sunday, said: "You must mean my daughter, Bess, she's done a bit of journalism at the Herald."

Ms Odone believes a Catholic editor is a must. "You have to take it pretty seriously. You're constantly defending the Catholic Church. You have to see yourself as the ambassador for an increasingly vociferous minority."

Commentators believe that a new editor would be wise to reinstate Alice Thomas Ellis, thenovelist and star columnist at the Herald until she was sacked after writing a piece denouncing the late and liberal Archbishop Worlock of Liverpool.

Ms Thomas Ellis says the Catholic papers make her "hopping mad." "This silly line they take," she fumed. "Modernism has crept into all of them. There's all this heresy - even if they're not full of it, there's always a pinch."

One Catholic journalist who has contributed to the Herald, said the paper's biggest problem is that it pays so poorly. "I wouldn't touch them with the present system. The best thing that could happen would be if Conrad Black bought the whole thing. Then it might have some chance of being taken seriously."