Public Square Magazine has now completed its fifth year of publication. In our ongoing efforts to improve, we ended last year with a review of our year written to our readers. We return for our second annual installment.

We love hearing from our readers and feel a sense of responsibility to serve each of you well. If you have questions or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@PublicSquareMag.org. It’s the easiest, most direct way to speak to our editors.

We are Growing a Community

In 2024 Public Square has begun to blossom beyond our articles. We launched our book club and have featured books from some preeminent Latter-day Saint voices. This book club has given our readers the opportunity to better dialogue and to grow our mission of elevating Latter-day Saint voices. Those voices are no longer just found on our editorial pages but in the social media conversations around them.

While we transitioned away from short-form social media last year, we’ve found that this has allowed us greater growth on other platforms. The Women in the Public Square, an alliance of like-minded women who help support one another in sharing positive faith-promoting content online, has also continued to grow this year, rounding out the growing sense of community around our magazine.

As our community has grown we’ve had an increased need for approaching moderation. And we’ve received some criticism from those who suggest that we’ve moderated too lightly, allowing content that is critical and factually inaccurate to remain on our pages. For example, after helping to break a major story that the origins of the CES letter, an influential anti-Mormon document, had been substantially misrepresented by its author, some commented on our stories that we were motivated to break this story because the accusations in the letter had never been answered. Though this claim is inaccurate—the substance of the CES letter has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked—we allowed these claims to stand on our pages. We believe that as our communities have grown, we benefit from the opportunity to recognize and confront these kinds of claims rather than simply moderate them away.

We hope that as we continue to grow, we will be better able to maintain this kind of self-sustaining conversation, which doesn’t require the degree of moderation that is sometimes necessary to prevent smaller communities from being co-opted by outside bad actors.

Ecumenicalism

For the second year in a row we participated with a broad coalition of faiths to celebrate Fidelity Month. Fidelity Month is the vision of Robert George, an occasional contributor to Public Square Magazine.

George sought to understand the virtues that have long helped to define goodness in the United States and settled on Fidelity. He defined four areas of fidelity: fidelity to God, fidelity to family, fidelity to community, and fidelity to nation. Our authors helped explore these areas to raise the profile of fidelity as a civic virtue.

We also sought inspiration from the larger evangelical movement in comparing our own tradition’s approach trajectory to projects they’ve previously embarked on, such as the seeker-sensitive movement or the no-hell movement.

We have also begun a series celebrating the principles taught in The Family Proclamation in preparation for its thirtieth anniversary. These principles continue to serve as a beacon to those across faiths looking for simple articulations of important truths, and we’ve found enthusiasm among our many religious friends for this series.

Politics and Unity

This year was Public Square Magazine’s second presidential election year. We attempted to build on our work in 2020 while applying the lessons we learned then.

In particular, we attempted to follow the roadmap set out by Dallin H. Oaks, the second most presiding leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Oaks had taught the importance of approaching political conversations with civility and balancing the need to stand for important principles while allowing each individual Latter-day Saint the freedom to conclude how to best apply those principles to the candidates available to vote for.

We largely tried to hit this goal by publishing editorials that focused on principles to consider leading up to the election rather than candidates. We strived to promote principles such as temperance, respect for democratic norms, and respect for women and families, among others. Our only article about candidates was a reported piece on how different Latter-day Saints are voting and why, not an editorial urging any direction.

We did receive some criticism for our late decision not to publish any editorials for or against candidates, but we ultimately felt that modeling the kind of unity we would need to find quickly in our wards and Sunday School classes was a better path forward.

Major Controversies

Among the largest stories we covered this year was the film Heretic, a film about a madman torturing two sister missionaries by making them listen to his lectures about atheism, in addition to the psychological and physical abuse they endured at his hands. 

We are particularly proud of our reporting on the story. We secured the script more than five months before its release and had our reporters at the premiere to observe the finished film and gauge reactions to it. 

Our comprehensive coverage of the film and its controversies were among our most widely read articles of the year. 

We also followed a slowly breaking story about the Associated Press’ failure to cover The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints according to their journalistic standards. These failures first appeared in 2023 when usually reliable reporter Michael Rezendes began including sloppy, slapdash conclusions in his articles about the Church. But these failures really revealed themselves in an April article about the subjects church leaders didn’t discuss in the recent General Conference.

They followed this up with an error-ridden article about new temples the Church is working to build in Las Vegas and the Dallas metro area. Despite these mistakes being plain, factual, and repeatedly brought to the attention of AP editors, the article still remains uncorrected.

The Associated Press has a long history of attempting to be among the most objective news sources, so we were glad we could chart and respond to this collapse of journalistic standards and norms as it happened.

We expect that this story will continue to develop in 2025.

Perhaps our most controversial story of this year concerned religious garments. The social media reaction to this story was broad and cut in many different directions. We are proud of our authors who helped articulate their faith and decisions, and we are glad that we are able to provide them with an alternative platform since they have been cut out of other coverage on this issue. We are also pleased with how our new moderation approaches have allowed those conversations to flourish on our social media.

Looking Forward

As Public Square Magazine looks forward to its sixth year, we remain committed to fostering a vibrant, respectful, and engaging community for our readers. Our focus will add collaborative projects that amplify meaningful dialogue, strengthen shared values, and build bridges of understanding. We are especially excited to expand our efforts in accessibility, ensuring that our content reaches broader audiences while maintaining the depth and integrity our readers value. From further refining our book club and community initiatives to deepening our partnerships with other contributors, we aim to make our platform even more impactful.

Faithful civil discourse remains at the heart of our mission. In a time of polarization and division, we will continue to strive to model and encourage conversations rooted in mutual respect, curiosity, and a commitment to truth. Inspired by prophetic counsel and guided by enduring principles, we hope to continue creating a space where the complexity of modern issues can be met with compassion and clarity. Thank you for being part of our journey. Here’s to another year of growth and meaningful engagement!

 

The post Our Year in Review: When Moderation Sparks the Loudest Debate appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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