Steve Waldman’s decision to sell faith-focused community site BeliefNet to News Corp (NYSE: NWS). last December wasn’t an easy one. Speaking on a panel at the Media Dealmakers Summit in New York, Waldman, the site’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, said some shareholders needed convincing. “The question for me and our board was, ‘How are we doing now and could we do much better in the belly of a much larger media company?” BeliefNet’s board and investors had different ways of looking at the question. Some wondered whether the deal was coming to early in the life of the business; others too late. A number of the company’s existing shareholders were employees, who held BeliefNet stock in return for accepting minimum wage as the company restructured itself after coming out of bankruptcy in 2002. “Ultimately, coupling all the different interests and time horizons people had [related to the company stock], that made it a good deal to sell.”

Waldman and I spoke after the session about how the integration is working out and the spiritual issues site’s plans for expanding its video offerings. More after the jump. The audio of our conversation can be downloaded here, or streamed below.

-- Getting together: The degree to which News Corp. gives its subsidiaries free reign is debatable. But Waldman said News Corp. presented BeliefNet, which is housed in the Fox Digital Media unit, with a “perfect combination of independence and support.” It’s still the early stages of the relationship - Waldman said most of his time is devoted to quotidian tasks such as transferring benefit plans. But on the content level, one of the first steps will involve video distribution and ad sales. Waldman: “As an independent company, we were somewhat hobbled - by cost constraints mostly – in our ability to do video well. It’s obviously an area where Fox and News Corp. have tremendous strengths on their own, but also in terms of Hulu and distribution networks.”

-- The benefits of big: BeliefNet’s video strategy is being formed around distributing its content more widely. Waldman is also considering whether to expand beyond the current stable of “self-helpish” short-form videos and user-gen to longer works with higher production values. “When we started that a year ago, there was no evidence that long-form was going to work for us – our audience is pretty low tech; they don’t have a lot of broadband penetration. I’m hearing that other companies are starting to get some traction with longer videos.  That’s a possibility. The ability to have multiple commercials, a half-hour program with commercials is something that consumers are used to - maybe even more so than a pre-roll on a short clip. The question for us is what types of long-form lends itself to this topic. Obviously, you have preachers go on an hour on TV and people watch that. What we’re seeing in our social network is that the user-generated video is much more creative than anything we can come up and it’s given us a lot more ideas of approaching video.”

-- Spiritual Boom: During the Q&A part of the panel, Waldman was asked whether Mitt Romney’s decision to suspend his campaign for the Republican nomination will diminish some attention the site might have gotten because of the former Massachusetts governor’s Mormon background. “I’m still hoping for [former Evangelical preacher Mike] Huckabee,” he quipped. Even if Huckabee doesn’t make it as the GOP standard bearer, religion content will still be big, Waldman told me later. He observed that as people get older, they tend to become more interested in spirituality. And as the Baby Boomers retire in greater numbers, “this huge demographic bulge is at the point in their lives when they care most about spirituality… Plus, people are shoppers now on everything and that includes content about religion. Whereas 50 years ago, people might have only sought information on religious matters from their priest or minister, they also seek that information from magazines, TV shows and websites. So a media hub to help quench that appetite is only going to become more important.”

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