Sharpening Teeth of Acclaimed KC-Based Catholic Watchdog

A national (and international) Kansas City company has a new leader who grew up here but doesn’t live here now and may never call Kansas City home again.

James Grimaldi began a few months ago as the new executive editor of The National Catholic Reporter, an award-winning, progressive newspaper voice for Catholicism.

Given Grimaldi’s long experience as a Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, he’s anxious to reenergize NCR’s honored history of hard-hitting stories.

“Investigative and accountability journalism that is independent of the Catholic Church,” he says, “is really the sweet spot for me. So we’re going to continue to do that.”

NCR, in fact, was 17 years ahead of the Boston Globe’s reporting on the now-infamous scandal of Catholic priests abusing children and of bishops who protected priests instead of kids.

And since its beginning in 1964, NCR has been a cheerleader for the Second Vatican Council, which reenergized the church and eventually produced a conservative backlash both here and abroad — despite efforts by Pope Francis to preserve and even renew much of what Vatican II produced.

All of that and more was described in the recently published book, “Beacon of Justice, Community and Hope: How NCR Has Sustained Independent Journalism from Vatican II to Pope Francis” by Lawrence B. Guillot.

“The NCR life story,” Guillot writes, “is full of conundrums. NCR has been and remains a relatively small company in terms of staff size and financial assets and is basically an entrepreneurial enterprise in its business orientation. Its mission, however, is religious and global.”

Grimaldi’s job — mostly working from his home in Washington, D.C., but with periodic trips to Kansas City — will be to reemphasize that mission, which began in a time of print-only newspapers but now appears in both print and online versions.

In addition, Grimaldi intends to add new features and make NCR not just a source of commentary on the news but also a source of news that NCR will be the first to report.

Grimaldi grew up with three brothers (Tom, Mike and Gerard) and two sisters (Mary, now deceased, and Meg), on Oak Street near 55th Street in Kansas City. His family was active at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church on Troost Avenue, a Jesuit congregation across the street from Rockhurst University.

“I remember seeing it (NCR) in the back of St. Francis Xavier,” Grimaldi says, “and the Jesuits at Rockhurst High School knew I was interested in journalism so they recommended that I read it. It became kind of a go-to place to stop and look because I was interested in church news, especially Vatican news.”

Grimaldi’s Italian-American family has deep Catholic roots, evidenced by Grimaldi’s late father, Frank, whose Frank Grimaldi Architecture firm designed churches.

“For 60 years,” says Grimaldi, “he worked for bishops and dioceses in the Midwest. I grew up around priests who were friends of the family — and Dad’s clients. But my parents, who were pretty conservative Catholics, didn’t think much of NCR.”

Today, he says, NCR has “really become kind of a virtual organization,” with staffers scattered around the country as well as at the Vatican: “But our two primary copyeditors are in Kansas City. And we still have a physical building there (115 E. Armour Blvd.) as well as a print operation and a lot of our important support staff,” he said in a phone interview from Washington.

His goal is to continue the best of the past but also try new — or at least newly revised — things.

For instance, he’s planning to bring back a humor column called Cry Pax!, which NCR founder Robert G. Hoyt used to publish. In fact, at least one of those columns already has appeared.

And he may publish more about food, including stories of monasteries that produce beer, fruitcake, and other items for sale.

Beyond that, he says, NCR may even “review Sunday Masses the way newspapers review restaurants: the music, readings, the homilies — and the doughnut hour afterward.”

Grimaldi also would like to see more non-Catholic writers’ work published in NCR. (For more than eight years, starting in 2010, I, as a Protestant, wrote an NCR column called A small c catholic.)

Grimaldi is glad NCR has stayed — and, if he has a voice in the decision, will stay — in Kansas City.

“I think,” he says, “that the location in Kansas City really gave the organization a national perspective. There are a lot of progressive Catholics here. And there’s a great history of Midwestern progressivism that has sustained NCR in many ways.”

Online Readership & Stable Finances

Grimaldi also will oversee the ongoing transition to a majority online readership and to financial sustainability through philanthropic support. But that’s not why he took the job when NCR publisher and chief executive officer Joe Ferullo offered it. So why did he say yes?

“When Tom Fox (NCR’s editor and publisher emeritus) asked me that question,” he said, “I told him, ‘The Holy Spirit.’ And I think I told The Washington Post that as well. It was a good time, I felt, to leave The Wall Street Journal. It’s undergoing some changes, contraction and retrenchment.”

Beyond that, he says, he and Ferullo “have a lot in common, both being Italian Americans married to Mexican Americans. . .” So expect NCR’s coverage under Grimaldi also to be even more multi-cultural (with continued emphasis on Catholic women leaders), which will reflect the reality of this global church.

Journalistic Firepower

Grimaldi’s approach will almost certainly produce a more must-read publication for Catholics and others.

He’s already hiring reporters and columnists he’s known through his membership in the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization and from other sources to write freelance pieces for NCR: “I’m tapping my resources to do things that are much more connected to the news. At the same time, I’m planning to launch a number of investigative and accountability projects.” (Fair warning to church authorities.)

For instance, he says, for such stories as last year’s $1.5 billion clergy-abuse settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he called an investigative reporter he’d known at The Wall Street Journal. Because she lives in L.A., he asked her to help cover this story. “And she produced a couple of pretty good pieces just based on the news,” he says.

There’s more of that to come. “I’m looking at the price being paid by churches and dioceses to pay off sexual abuse clients. And we have a number of other targets in mind.”

So after a year or so without someone as executive editor, NCR is poised to make its 60-plus-year-old self new again, and that can only benefit the church.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the status of Grimaldi’s sisters.

Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website, book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com.