United Methodist News' roots reach back to 1940, when the Commission on Public Information was created at the same General Conference that united the Methodist Protestant Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Even before that point, however, press offices with the predecessor denominations had been reporting on the life of the church. The 1968 merger of
the Methodist Church with the Evangelical United Brethren Church created today’s United Methodist Church. Four years later, Methodist Information was merged with TRAFCO (Television, Radio and Film Commission) and the Program and Benevolence Interpretation ministry, forming United Methodist Communications. The newly named United Methodist News Service became a unit of the agency. United Methodist News has been the authoritative source of information about the work of the church, reporting on church growth, outreach ministries and social issues. It has covered the church’s response to such major events as desegregation in the 1960s, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, the 2004 South Asia tsunami, and the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa in 2014.
