Dear Patheos:

I hope you guys are doing well. I’ve been meaning to drop you a line and I’ve finally gotten around to it.

The last three years have gone by so quickly! Image journal’s blog “Good Letters” has flourished here, gaining many more readers than would ever have been possible if we’d remained sequestered on our own website.

We’ve been amazed at your growth and all the many fascinating conversations about religions that take place here. The rise of Patheos has certainly been one of the more remarkable stories among religious websites on the Internet.

I must say that you’ve treated us well. You regularly choose posts from “Good Letters” to be featured on your home page. That means a lot to us, precisely because our posts reflect Image’s identity as a literary quarterly seeking to bring the indirect, intuitive language of art to bear on the big religious questions.

That you should single out many of our posts is especially meaningful because, let’s face it, the main engines of the blogosphere are politics and polemics. So our pieces, reflective and often refracted through the interiority of the personal essay form, aren’t going to generate hundreds of comments. That you’d still feature our posts so often is an honor, and one we will never take for granted.

But as grateful as we’ve been, the need to share a few thoughts with you has become more urgent.

I know: It’s awkward. People tell me that I’m too prone to be confrontational. But don’t worry: This is not a “Dear John” letter. It’s just that we need to tell you how we’re feeling. It seems to me that your whole vision is about the value of honest, open dialogue, so I hope you will support my decision to speak out.

In fact, I’m sure that as you grow and evolve you’re also pondering some of the issues I’m about to raise. May these words continue the conversation.

First, I’m a little concerned about the way you slice and dice everything into channels. To be sure, channels help organize that vast amount of information and activity on this site. People do tend to identify with specific religions and streams within those larger traditions.

I also understand why your blogs may need a home base in some division of the website—this makes for better administration and editing—but as an interfaith and ecumenical organization it’s just a little uncomfortable for us to be listed in your Evangelical Channel, as if that truly characterized our full identity.

We love our evangelical readers and contributors—they have always been—and remain—a large and valued constituency within our community—but your system pigeon-holes Image in a way that does not fairly represent who we are or what we do. We get questions about this.

I believe you also asked the folks at the Progressive Christian Channel to post links to our pieces now and again, but that doesn’t really solve the problem.

(On a personal note, I had to laugh when I was told early on that the Catholic Channel didn’t want us! That didn’t surprise this Catholic boy.)

You do have some topical channels but we’d hardly fit under “Entertainment.” Why not establish an Arts and Culture Channel or something along those lines? Think about it.

Then there’s the question of aesthetics, which is another issue we hold dear. The whole site needs a makeover, folks! Yes, there’s always going to be a “busy-ness” to all the different elements that make up a page, but a cleaner, sleeker design could help. Tell us it’s in the works!

Finally, and most awkwardly: advertisements.

I get that you’re a for-profit venture and that you need to provide a return on investment. And it’s hardly shocking to me that moronic click-bait ads help to pay your bills.

Even at a website devoted to thoughtful discourse it seems that there are people who will click to find out about “limitless” pills that can supercharge my IQ or the insane muscle-builder that will change my life in thirty days.

Maybe those photos of fat ladies and skinny seventy-year-old men with nice pecs and grotesque organic blobs in people’s hands are just weird enough to serve as bait for my non-supercharged IQ….

But those video ads with the sound on? What is with that? I’ve found myself reloading the web page in the hopes that some algorithm would give me a video-free page, but after failing a few times to escape the talking video I felt like I was trapped in some surreal Internet nightmare.

Then there are the politically charged ads. I know, I know. Free speech, etc. But you have to know that there’s danger here: If the vast preponderance of political ads seem to come from one political perspective, there’s a real danger that you’ll lose the appearance of neutrality, which seems like an important value for y’all to hang onto. And to be perfectly honest, a few of them have been…well, creepy.

Just so you know, we get a lot of questions about these ads from our readers. Extremely unhappy readers.

So I wasn’t surprised that you recently sent out an email to Patheos contributors that said: “We have recently been testing technology that allows Ads to be shown to readers who have turned on an Adblocker technology.”

Blocking the adblockers?

Maybe a better policy would be to find advertisers that people don’t want to block. It might take you a bit longer to achieve profitability, but it would be worth the wait.

Look, this is a delicate issue, but Patheos is a site devoted to religion and ethics, and this is a morally charged issue if there ever was one, right?

Don’t most religions tell us that how we answer these fraught ethical questions is fundamental to our flourishing as human beings?

Well, thanks for hearing me out! We’re hoping you’ll continue the conversation with us!

 

Yours,

Gregory Wolfe

Publisher of Good Letters