Throughout his career, James V. Grimaldi has balanced his identities as a journalist and lifelong practicing Catholic. But his new job will merge the two.
By Jeremy Barr
“I think the Holy Spirit kind of gave me a kick in the butt to take this job,” Grimaldi, who starts Sept. 16, told The Washington Post.
His departure comes at a time of transition for the Journal, which laid off about 30 staffers in February, including many well-known reporters. The cuts are part of a larger newsroom restructuring under editor Emma Tucker, a veteran of the Murdoch media empire who took over the paper in February 2023.
“We have a new editor, a new vision,” said Grimaldi, 62, who spent 11 years at The Post before joining the Journal. “That causes everyone to rethink what is your role here and how can you best serve that. I feel like I had a great place, a great job, an opportunity to do great investigative journalism. But I do think that there’s a changing mission and higher turnover of stories and volume demands that made me think, ‘Well, is this the right thing to do? Are these the kinds of stories that I want to continue doing, or do I want to try to do something different?’”
Joe Ferullo, a former CBS executive who serves as the Catholic paper’s publisher, said he wasn’t initially sure if Grimaldi was serious about leaving the Journal for the role.
“It’s always lovely but a little stunning and surprising when someone from the secular media world says, ‘I want to do this. I want to step into this world,’” he said.
Ferullo said he was intrigued by the investigative muscle Grimaldi could bring to the organization, which he hopes will reach an even larger audience. “What he can bring to it is a wider lens,” he said.
Founded in 1964, the nonprofit National Catholic Reporter is a rare outlet covering the Catholic community that has no corporate ties to the church — “which allows us to do straight news and allows us to report what we want to report,” Ferullo said. With a staff of 40, it has long punched above its weight. In 1985, it detailed child sex abuse by members of the clergy well before the Boston Globe’s lauded Spotlight team series.
“By the time The Boston Globe succeeded in bringing the scandal to the attention of the entire world, the NCR had been doggedly covering the story for 17 years, often alone,” former media executive William F. Baker wrote in USA Today in 2016.
The publication, which Grimaldi said he’s read since he was a teenager, also stands out for its coverage of the LGBTQ+ community, reproductive rights and climate change.
Grimaldi said he plans to seek reporting grants and use his connections in the journalism industry to create partnerships that he expects will expand the publication’s reach. He also promised extensive coverage of the upcoming presidential election, including the vice-presidential bids of Tim Walz, who was raised Catholic before joining the Lutheran church, and JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult. Echoing trends in the broader news industry, 40 percent of newspapers run by local dioceses have closed since 2005, leaving a void that Grimaldi plans to fill with independent reporting.
“In order for us to elevate our coverage, we’re going to have to basically rely on this scrappy little machine to kind of cobble together a big vision of ambitious journalism,” he said. “I feel like I could do that. This job really was made for me in many ways.”
