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CNS Veteran Journalists to Join OSV News in January

Julie Asher, John Mulderig and Bob Roller

Three veteran Catholic News Service journalists will be joining the OSV News wire service when it launches on Jan. 1, OSV announced Friday. CNS National Editor Julie Asher, former CNS Assistant Director for Media Reviews John Mulderig, and CNS Photographer Bob Roller will bring more than seven decades of combined experience in Catholic media with them to OSV News.

The addition of Asher, Mulderig and Roller underscores the commitment of OSV News to fill the void left by the closure of the domestic offices of Catholic News Service, the longtime news arm of the U.S. bishops, at the end of this year. Catholic News Service will continue to operate its Rome Bureau, which will be distributed through the OSV News wire service.

“We are delighted to have Julie, John and Bob as a part of the team as we report on Catholic issues and issues that affect Catholics,” said Gretchen R. Crowe, OSV News Editor-in-Chief. “They bring with them a vast institutional knowledge and expertise that will be invaluable as OSV News grows. Julie, John and Bob provide a fitting consistency with the past along with great hope for the future.”

Asher first joined CNS in August 1985 as a news reporter on the National Desk, covering health, medical and ethical issues involving Catholic teaching, including abortion, as well as other general assignments. Since 1989, Asher has coordinated all of CNS’s national coverage, assigning news stories and features to staff reporters and freelancers. She also edited those stories and coordinated coverage with the CNS Photo Desk. In her additional role as the CNS intern coordinator, Asher has dedicated herself to mentoring the next generation of journalists for Catholic or secular media. As the first Senior Editor for OSV News, Asher will be an invaluable cornerstone of the news service, bringing with her a history of journalistic excellence and love of the Catholic faith.

Asher has been a member of the Society for Professional Journalists for more than 35 years and is a longtime member of the Catholic Media Association of the United States and Canada. In 2018, the association honored Asher with its St. Francis de Sales Award, the highest honor given by the CMA in recognition of her “outstanding contributions to Catholic journalism.”

“I am excited to be part of the OSV News team and extremely pleased that OSV will continue CNS’s 100-year-plus legacy of faithful reporting on the Church with fairness and truth,” Asher said.

For the past 15 years, John Mulderig’s media reviews have guided Catholics all over the nation and beyond with their media choices thanks to his dedicated work at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic News Service. He will serve as Media Reviewer for OSV News. 

Mulderig was born to American parents living in Bermuda. He graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature cum laude and with departmental honors.

He served, successively, as assistant producer, associate producer and producer in the Radio and Television Department of The Christophers. He then joined the faculty of Mount Saint Agnes Academy in Hamilton, Bermuda, of which he is an alumnus, where he taught, at various times, English, history and religion.

In 2007, Mulderig became a media reviewer for the USCCB’s former Office for Film and Broadcasting. Following a reorganization of the USCCB’s Communications Department, he joined the staff of Catholic News Service as Assistant Director for Media Reviews. His faith-based assessments of films and television programming are currently syndicated by Catholic Review Media of Baltimore.

“I am delighted to be joining the staff of OSV News and the larger family of OSV,” Mulderig said. “I look forward to the opportunity to continue the mission of assessing film and television from a Catholic perspective, and to offering guidance to parents and other adults making Gospel-based viewing choices for themselves.”

Prior to joining CNS in 1995, Bob Roller worked as a photographer at Gannett Newspapers’ USA TODAY and The Nashville Tennessean. He was the Chief Photographer at the Pacific Daily News on the island of Guam. He also worked with The Gazette Newspaper Group (owned by The Washington Post), and as a Game Day Magazine photographer for the NFL Washington Redskins football franchise (today’s Washington Commanders).

During his time at CNS, Roller covered major news events, with his images telling the Catholic Church’s story during Hurricane Katrina (2005), the Haiti Earthquake (2010), World Youth Day (Cologne 2005 and Krakow 2015), Pope Francis’s historic visit to the United States (2015), Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (2017), and the Kentucky Tornado aftermath (2021).

Roller’s CNS work also documented the Church’s mission to the peripheries, including photojournalism that covered a medical mission trip led by a religious sister along the Amazon Basin in 2015. He will serve OSV News as Photography Editor.

“I am very excited about continuing my ministry in photography with OSV News and helping to build a wire service that will provide accurate news and quality images to our clients in the U.S. and abroad,” Roller said.

Asher, Mulderig and Roller join the OSV News team with Peter Jesserer Smith as National News and Features Editor and Gretchen R. Crowe as Editor-in-Chief.

OSV News will go live at CatholicNews.com at the start of 2023 to provide national and international news, analysis, editorials, commentary and features from a Catholic perspective every day.

OSV, the parent company of OSV News, was founded in 1912 by Father John Francis Noll. Its flagship publication, Our Sunday Visitor, has been published weekly for 110 years. Father Noll, who became bishop of what is now the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and was later named an honorary archbishop for his service to the Catholic media in the United States and internationally, was an early supporter of CNS and of the Catholic Press Association (now the Catholic Media Association). In the mid-20th century, OSV was instrumental in helping numerous dioceses establish their own newspapers, many of which were printed in OSV’s current Huntington, Indiana, headquarters.

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