WCR comes off good year, future finances uncertain

The Western Catholic Reporter returned to a positive financial statement in its 2004-05 fiscal year that ended March 31.

The newspaper ended up with a surplus of $39,225 for the year compared with a loss of $734 for the previous year.

We did it while the assessment charged to parishes across the archdiocese was frozen for the second consecutive year. (It will be frozen again for 2006.)

How did it happen?

The main change in 2004-05 from the previous fiscal year was that we did not have the expense of the special edition that we distributed to nearly 500,000 homes across the Edmonton Archdiocese in October 2003.

But we also increased advertising revenue by more than $21,000 and our sales of the newspaper through subscriptions and bundles delivered to parishes brought in almost $4,000 more revenue.

The future, however, is uncertain. As noted in the story below, we face a possible increase of $63,000 or more in our mailing costs for the paper in the next year.

Sharp ongoing increases in the cost of mailing the paper could eventually affect the way the WCR is delivered to you. That, in my view, could be tragic. One of the main benefits of our current system is that the paper goes to many homes where the connection to the Catholic Church is tenuous.

For thousands of our readers, the WCR is the only weekly connection with the Church. We reach many people who are registered with parishes in the Edmonton Archdiocese but who attend church infrequently. I hope the WCR will always be able to come to their homes.

Our forecast for the current year is for general stability. We expect to dip into our cash reserves to pay for the special issue we published Sept. 5 on the Church’s role in Alberta’s first 100 years. Along with being distributed to our regular readers, copies of that issue were made available in parishes across the province.

We strive to always produce a top-quality Catholic newspaper which addresses the issues of our time. Enclosed with this issue of the paper is an envelope which you may use to make a personal donation to help us meet the costs of producing that newspaper 44 weeks a year.

- Glen Argan

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