We have lamented the Dallas Morning News’s near departure from religion coverage, but almost simultaneously, we’ve noticed the growth of another religion hub down the Texas road at the Houston Chronicle. Nearly every day, the editor of Houston Belief posts a religion news story on Believe It or Not, as she directs the rest of her team of bloggers in other religion-related coverage.

The lady behind the site is Kate Shellnutt, a religion reporter, blogger and web producer for the Chronicle whose work has earned honors from the Society for Features Journalism and Religion Newswriters Association. Before her time at the Chronicle, she studied religion and journalism at Washington and Lee University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Shellnutt says her academic background, focusing on religious communities and the Internet, plays into some of her philosophies about Houston Belief as well as her approach to engaging with religious groups on social media. Her thesis was on the digitization of the Bible, and she conducted a sociological study on religious rituals on the web, particularly online confession.

Naturally, you can also find Shellnutt on Twitter (personal & professional) and Facebook, or RSS feed. We asked her to weigh in on how she handles the mix of responsibilities, especially in a climate where the traditional religion reporter’s role could be changing.

You’re editing a mix of opinion and news for the religion site Houston Chronicle and writing news posts. How does religion coverage compare online to what goes in print? Is online a better outlet for the mix of coverage you do?

HoustonBelief.com offers more stories and represents a broader range of faiths on a day-to-day basis than our weekly print section, Belief. The site is newsier and has a social component, with about 20 blogs from community members and active commenters.

Much of what we do on the web feeds into the print section, which typically includes one of my best blog entries from the week, one of our readers’ best entries, a couple wire news stories and a local religion feature story.

Since you probably know exactly how many hits a story sees, how do you see analytics impacting the future of religion news? Do you see numbers that show religion news does well on the Chronicle’s site? Is there a temptation to cover stories just for hits?

I do pay attention to site traffic, and luckily, Houston readers care about religion. Big names like our own Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes always draw in clicks, as do stories about celebrities and faith, news-of-the-weird, the culture wars and certain religious groups, like atheists, Muslims and Mormons. Rather than cover a shallow story solely to draw up site traffic, I try to present thoughtful reporting or timely aggregations in ways that are particularly enticing for online readers—striking headlines, buzzy framing, strong images, etc.

As you assign and edit a mix of opinion, blogging and reporting, do you find yourself managing writers who could turn into sources? Do you think religion reporters at mainstream outlets will fill more of an editor/aggregator role?

The volunteer bloggers for Houston Belief come up with their own story ideas and write their own posts, and they do a great job. I’m here to provide general direction to the group about topics they might want to address or to help with the technical side of the site, but I don’t have editorial control. I try to avoid quoting Houston Belief contributors in my coverage, but I often ask them to recommend friends, leaders, organizations or events for stories. They’ve been very helpful connecting me with their religious communities.

Like many others covering religion for a newspaper, I split my time between this beat and several other tasks. Bringing in community bloggers and aggregating news stories when possible make my job more manageable. For religion reporters who work on the web (or are responsible for a web component), I think these strategies allow them to keep readers interested and updated in a time-efficient way.

The Dallas Morning News once had a robust religion section, which turned into a robust religion blog before the paper decided to focus energies elsewhere. Is there something about Texas that makes religion coverage tricky?

This change happened years before I lived in Texas, but I would assume the decision to scale back on religion coverage wasn’t because of the religious landscape in Texas, but the financial situation of the paper. Religion sections can be hard to maintain ad-wise because often the most interested parties—churches, non-profits, schools, etc.—aren’t dropping as much money on advertising as companies may spend in other sections. At the Chronicle, our Belief section in print has gotten a little smaller over the past few years, but HoustonBelief.com is getting more traffic than ever.

Several journalists seemed to resonate with Steve Buttry’s post “Dear Newsroom Curmudgeon…” Do you think religion reporters could become a bit more open to new media? How would you recommend they start harnessing newer technology better?

I think all reporters should be more open to new media. For religion reporters, it’s especially essential because (as I mentioned at the Religion Newswriters Association panel on social media) our sources and our readers are online. America’s most influential pastors, churches and religious leaders—for the most part—are blogging, tweeting, Facebook-ing and Instagram-ing. If we’re unplugged, we miss the chance to follow them, learn more about them and pick up on news stories.

If you’re hesitant or consider yourself technology-impaired, it’s fine to start by “lurking,” that is, tracking online activity without engaging just yet. Start following blogs and social media accounts relevant to your interests or your beat. Take note about what you like about the best ones (what info they shared, how often they posted, tone, etc.) and keep that in mind when you do decide to begin your own.

Where do you get your news about religion? Do you seek out sources for watching news different than religion reporters have in the past (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)?

I absolutely rely on the Internet for religion news and story ideas. I follow local and national religious leaders and organizations on Twitter and Facebook. Because they’re updated so often, I can get more news and context than I would from a press release, bulletin or even a quick conversation with a pastor.

Every day, I read popular personal blogs written by people of faith, blogs by religion reporters and articles in religion journal and publications, in addition to following wire stories. There’s a huge amount of information out there, and I’ve become a filter for sharing, retweeting or contextualizing what’s most relevant and interesting to the HoustonBelief.com audience.

If you take the future of journalism seriously, you might consider reading a new piece on how journalism isn’t just being overlooked, it’s being replaced.

Follow the right people and organizations on Facebook and Twitter, and you’ll find out what’s happening close to you, straight from the source. LocalWiki, Pinwheel, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare clearly do not replace a good local newspaper, but they offer a combo that is increasingly becoming good enough.

We saw the trend back when Craigslist began killing newspaper’s classified ads, and now we’re seeing increasing competition over content. Honestly, why would I read your book review when I can see my friends’ Goodreads ratings, Facebook recommends and Amazon reviews? Why would I read your story on President Obama and gay marriage, when I can read any old blog, twitter or comment thread about it? What new piece of information are you adding to the table that competes for my valuable time looking at puppies on Pinterest? As Stijn Debrouwere writes, “[T]here’s a limit to our appetite, and every minute spent on Facebook is one not spent on a news site.”

There are organizations and websites everywhere that are taking over newspapers’ role as tastemaker and watchdog and forum. These disruptors don’t replace investigative reporting, but they replace the other 95% of what made professional news organizations important.

What does this have to do with religion journalism? Fred Clark (thank you!) started me on a rant about how the media needs to think more carefully about how they spend their resources. Discussions about the future raise the question of whether outlets are currently spending valuable time and money in places that could be allocated elsewhere. I brought up two case studies connected to President Obama’s announcement on gay marriage.

For another case study, let’s consider Mitt Romney’s commencement speech at Liberty University over the weekend. Yes, it was symbolic, but people who care were probably watching via web stream anyway, following on Twitter and commenting about it to their Facebook friends. I’m not saying reporters shouldn’t cover it. I’m generally pleased to see a religion story make national news.

I’m questioning whether we need a number of national journalists flocking down to Lynchburg to cover a speech that’s widely available to the public. It’s why I spent the beautiful morning at the zoo with my niece instead of glued to my computer, watching the speech later. From what I understand, Romney didn’t convert from Mormonism, so I didn’t see much breaking news. Why don’t news outlets at least post a link to full video and text, instead of just their take on it? You would think after several years of blogs now, outlets would catch up.

I heard some lamenting about how fewer reporters are covering the presidential campaigns and I can’t help but wonder: why are there so many reporters on the campaigns to begin with, when they all seem to cover the same story every day? There are exceptional reporters, of course, but Middle America often sees one narrative coming from the Beltway, trust me. I could see an exception for outlets like wire services and a few national publications, but everyone doesn’t have to pretend to be the New York Times, right? Besides, isn’t it a bit paparazzi-ish?

If anything on the Liberty story, the political reporters might consider stepping aside and letting religion reporters take the ball on this one. For political reporters, all that seems to matter is the vote count. Religion reporters can dig deeper into why theological differences matter, as Terry pointed out. In a recent chat I had with Sarah Posner on Bloggingheads, we talked about how Romney dropped names of well-regarded figures among evangelicals, such as Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, William Wilberforce and others. Would political reporters pick up on those names enough to know that he was signaling something?

Would a journalist (reporter or editor) with religion sensibilities write, as The New York Times did, Pat Roberts instead or Pat Robertson, or describe Liberty University as “the spiritual heart of the conservative movement.” Are political journalists willing to dig for background on President Obama’s note of the Golden Rule for his support for gay marriage? Those who focus only on votes risk losing an audience that wants a bigger picture.

Remember the piece I mentioned at the beginning of this post? Here’s one of his big tips:

Write to people’s passion, and they will gobble up just about anything.

Hey, you know what people are passionate about? You guessed it: Religion! (ba-dum-ching!)

Leading media gurus might want to put their heads together to figure out what they can produce that is truly unique to the Internet, TV, print, or however else people are consuming information. Otherwise, we might all be working for Wikipedia some day.

Image of sleeping puppies via Wikimedia Commons.

I went on a little rant last week about whether media outlets are dividing up their resources in savvy ways. One of the biggest issues I see is whether reporters should rush to cover the latest trending topic when they’re not given the time to develop unique, original stories.

One of the most obvious examples of a flocking to the same story trend came last week with President Obama’s announcement on same-sex marriage. The announcement was a big deal, for many, many reasons. Yes, I also contributed a piece to the flock of stories. But are media outlets, in their attempts to cover the “big story,” allocating their resources wisely? Let’s look at two articles as case studies.

First, we have Reuters, a wire service that managed to produce the most predictable 550-word story with eight — eight! — staffers. They did win the prize for the most bizarre lede of the day:

Some rejoiced in the U.S. president’s courage. Others predicted hellfire at the polls. One pastor said he would reflect on the matter in prayer.

I don’t doubt that someone somewhere predicted hellfire at the polls, but none of the quotes in the story back up that lede. Instead, the quotes are full of might-as-well-be-press-release-material quotes.

“It just makes me giddy with joy. I have been bouncing around all day,”

“I’m not happy with it. I believe scripture. God’s word says gay marriage is wrong.”

Quote from a statement

Quote from a statement

“I don’t think that’s appropriate for the president,” Bargaineer said. “The Bible’s strictly against that.”

“Because he understands oppression, he knows that loves is no second-class thing,”

“It has taken him a while to get there,” he said, “but it is just deeply moving for me to hear the president of the United States finally acknowledge the full dignity and humanity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and our families.”

Really? This is what an international wire service moves? If the story had one reporter on the breaking news story, I might understand it. But eight — again, eight — reporters dredged up these quotes?

Second, we have the New York Times, which devoted nine reporters for its second-day story. I think we’re supposed to be impressed that the reporters come from all around the country?

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. apologized to President Obama for hastening him into an endorsement of same-sex marriage, several people briefed on the exchange said Thursday, even as the White House sought to capitalize in the campaign on Mr. Obama’s long-awaited expression of support.

Well, what did Biden say?

Many conservative advocacy groups displayed no such reticence to wade into the debate. These groups, which will play major roles in trying to motivate voters to the polls, see an opportunity to drive a wedge between Mr. Obama and religious voters, a group he made significant inroads with in 2008.

Well, what are the polls showing?

Despite the White House friction, by Thursday there were signs that Mr. Obama’s comments had compelled a number of liberal donors, who had previously remained on the sidelines, to open their wallets.

Well, how much money did he raise in the first day?

Sure, you won’t get to those questions when you’re breaking news, but if you’re putting nine reporters on it for a second day follow, you should be able to get more specifics. The piece focuses on OMG, what is this going to do for the election, and not OMG, what is this going to mean legally. For the latter angle, I looked to coverage from Scotusblog to explain some really basic facts about what Obama’s announcement did—and didn’t—say. For instance, the federal government hasn’t and probably won’t get involved in a challenge to Proposition 8. So what does Obama’s support mean at the state level, when he’s said it’s not a federal issue?

In our two case studies, one is a wire service and one is a national newspaper, so of course they’re going to devote a lot of resources to a major story. But did they break any ground that other people weren’t going to break? Not in those pieces.

Image of the Pied Piper via Wiki Commons.

The other day, my husband and I began the fifth season of The Wire. So four years ago, right? We watched this episode called “More with Less,” showing how reporters and editors at the Baltimore Sun have to do “more with less,” more stories, more tweeting, more multimedia with less reporters, less pay, less resources.

Since I work for a print publication, I think I know a little bit about the state of the publishing industry and this concept of “more with less.” But Fred Clark at Patheos isn’t convinced, based on a post he wrote in response to a brief comment I posted earlier this week. Let me explain.

Last week we discussed the state of the philanthropy beat where I lamented that the New York Times no longer has someone focused specifically on that beat, instead moving the reporter over to the business desk. In promoting the podcast discussion, I wrote the following comment:

We’re also noticing a possible disappearance of the philanthropy beat where a reporter focuses specifically in that area.

… One thing is becoming clearer: newspapers seem less eager to assign reporters to such specific beats.

In response, Clark wrote:

How can anyone claim to be performing media criticism without being aware that newspapers don’t have enough reporters anymore.

A beat reporter for philanthropy? What universe are you living in if you imagine that’s anything more than a pipe-dream luxury for a 21st-century American newsroom?

The key here, though, is that the reporter wasn’t laid off, so the newspaper could obviously still afford to employ the staffer. The question is, should she be devoted to a niche like philanthropy or something more broad like business? What I see is newspapers following each other in droves to capitalize on the latest trending topic instead of developing niche, original stories. How many reporters do we need covering Jessica Simpson’s baby or even Instagram’s sale to Facebook?

Clark quotes a study that newspapers now employ 40,600 editors and reporters, compared to a peak of 56,900 in the pre-Internet year of 1990. Yes, that’s tough, but we also all have access to more news than ever before. Keeping people in niche beats isn’t necessarily about the state of the industry, but if we’re talking in economic terms, it seems like you would want your reporters to offer something unique to the news hole, not become more generic in coverage.

Back to Clark, who says:

Newsrooms are doing less with less. A lot less with a lot less.

The editors and reporters all know it. Their readers certainly know it. Even the beancounters themselves know it.

But the news seems not yet to have reached the media critics at GetReligion.

Believe me, I know about “more with less.” Just today I worked on a feature piece, edited stories and blog posts, brainstormed and assigned others, formatted some photos, tweeted and Facebooked a bunch, responded to several emails, jumped on a Google video chat, made a few phone calls, toyed with Google+ and Pinterest, read part of a book for an upcoming interview and clicked through most of my Google reader. I don’t even know what it’s like to write one story per day anymore, and I work for a monthly publication. Watch Kate Shellnutt, Dan Gilgoff/Eric Marrapodi, Elizabeth Tenety, Cathy Grossman, Bob Smietana, Kevin Eckstrom, and many more at daily (or hourly) publications. Many reporters and editors will likely resonate with this new Tumblr.

Yes, there were 28% more reporters and editors before, but journalists also didn’t have equipment like smartphones, laptops, iPads, equipment that allows every outlet to post all day every day. And all of a sudden, we’re in competition for eyeballs with the rest of the internet, Justin Bieber’s twitter feed and all. If publications want to be smart about “more with less,” they would ask reporters to find more unique stories instead of chasing the same story. Sure, you might tip your blog or twitter hat to the Time magazine boob cover, but you don’t need to have eight reporters producing a predictable, bland story about President Obama and gay marriage.

What I meant in my very quick/passing comment was that as more and more niche sites are popping up (Golf for women! Vegan for the foodie! Mormons who love Pinterest!), newspapers seem to be getting even more and more generic, putting someone from the philanthropy beat into the generic business category. The business model is complex, but perhaps newspapers would do a bit better if they assigned people to really niche categories so they could generate fascinating stories about a particular area, not try to make everyone so generically bland in their beats.

Yes, it’s more with less, but that doesn’t mean you have to stoop to the lowest common beat. If your newsroom staff gets cut by 50%, do you hone in on what you do best or stop trying to offer something unique in the absence of others on the beat? From a business model, I would think you want to do the latter. It’s why more newspapers are trying to go local, local, local. If they extended that idea, they would go beat, beat, beat.

Just look at the Washington Post’s recent Elizabeth Flock-gate where the newspaper had one reporter capitalizing on the most popular stories through aggregating. “The goal is to surf the trend waves on the Internet, hoping to catch a few thousand page views as a story crests,” Patrick B. Pexton wrote. “It’s cashing in on the passing popularity of a story even if you don’t have a reporter covering it.” The problem was, Flock made some mistakes under pressure to write a lot under little deadline. The question many outlets will have to face is, should they invest in very nimble content through experts who can really exploit coverage areas, or should they go generic to try to save money but possibly degrade the brand?

This all goes back to the religion beat for us, where we strongly advocate media outlets employ at least one person with an expertise in religion to spot stories, prevent holes and explain nuances to an audience. It’s about prioritizing more what you do have with less resources.

Image “do less be more” via Shutterstock.

We’re a big fan of polls and reporters who understand how to use polls to show a particular trend. In a recent story, though, one reporter found a strange way to twist data for a set narrative that didn’t seem to hold up.

In our most recent podcast, we discussed a rather confusing piece from The Economist that simultaneously suggested the evangelical landscape is changing due to younger and Latino evangelicals, but it also suggested that more evangelicals are self-identifying with the Republican Party.

As Chris put it in the comments, “They’re growing more diverse AND they’re more Republican? I’m confused.” The article makes the point that evangelicals have struggled to vote for Mitt Romney in the Republican primary, but at the same time, many of the younger ones voted for President Obama in 2008.

Those who didn’t vote for Romney in the primary probably voted instead for Rick Santorum. Romney’s struggle in the Republican primary probably won’t carry the same parallels in the general election.

We’re also noticing a possible disappearance of the philanthropy beat where a reporter focuses specifically in that area. Sari wrote the following comment:

The Austin American Statesman has Andrea Ball, who covers charities and mental illness in the paper, as well as the paper’s charity chat. Arts organizations, which are also philanthropies (e.g., the opera, museums), are usually covered by the guy who handles social events. I can’t remember either of them ever taking. A religion angle.

While philanthropy doesn’t necessarily have religion angles, we see some possible overlap. One thing is becoming clearer: newspapers seem less eager to assign reporters to such specific beats.

Finally, we also talked about a course Google is offering that appears to have possible Buddhist underpinnings. Unfortunately, the reporter didn’t exactly spell out whether there were religious ideas and only mentioned the course founder’s Buddhism like you might mention the color of his eyes.

Enjoy the podcast.

You know it’s election season when reporters start to take note of evangelicals a bit more than usual.

The Economist has a new piece on the supposed changing landscape of evangelicalism and what it means politically. The piece is set up describing three evangelicals who apparently defy evangelical stereotypes.

CONSIDER three young religious-minded people of the left. The first is Andi Sullivan, who set up a charity to distribute mosquito netting to Africa and Asia during her first year at university.

I don’t know any conservative evangelical who opposes mosquito netting, especially if it’s driven by nonprofits. But the story fits the reporter’s narrative that evangelicals have all acted one way while the coming generation will change the picture.

The vast majority of evangelicals oppose gay marriage. They are more likely than non-evangelicals to oppose extra funding for public education, unemployment benefits and aid to the poor, both within and outside America. And a poll taken by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2010 showed that nearly half of all white evangelicals favour deporting illegal immigrants.

The story’s premise suggests younger and/or Latino evangelicals could change the makeup of the political landscape because they could change the evangelical landscape. But what the piece doesn’t point out is that Latino evangelicals are pretty opposed to gay marriage and abortion. Much of the piece uses stats without citing specific polls, so it’s difficult to see whether the reporter is using data worth noting. The most recent poll on immigration is really from 2010?

The prominence of evangelicals within the Republican Party is increasing: they made up more than half of all Republican voters in the first 16 primaries and caucuses where entry and exit polls were taken, up from 44% in 2008.

And fully 70% of white evangelicals consider themselves Republican these days, up from 65% in 2008.

It might not be useful to compare 2012 to 2008 since party identification is pretty low. Perhaps some evangelicals have shifted identity as independents?

But if those numbers are comforting for Republicans, the trends below the surface are less so. Mitt Romney, the all-but-official Republican nominee, is a Mormon, and has struggled throughout the primaries to win the backing of evangelical voters. And in 2008 Barack Obama won the votes of nearly one in four evangelical voters; comfortably more than the one in five John Kerry won four years earlier. He showed particularly strong gains over Mr Kerry among younger evangelicals, and in swing states. Our three examples might not remain as outliers for too much longer.

Romney likely didn’t struggle among evangelicals in the primary because they’re turning liberal. If anything, they were turning towards a candidate they saw as more conservative: Rick Santorum. Oops: that doesn’t fit the narrative.

Given the traditional strength of Republicans among evangelicals and the record number of illegal immigrants, mostly Latino, deported by Mr Obama’s administration, Latino evangelicals ought in theory to be easy pickings for Mr Romney in 2012. But that may not be the case. Mr Bush supported immigration reform in the teeth of opposition from congressional Republicans. Mr Romney, on the other hand, was endorsed by and campaigned with Kris Kobach, who helped write the harsh immigration laws passed by Arizona and Alabama.

The reporter makes the jump that Latino evangelicals all oppose immigration laws Romney wants enforced. Is there any data to support that assumption? John McCain didn’t make much headway with the same group, despite his stance. The reporter quotes one pastor, taking the beliefs of one person and universalizing them for an entire subset.

In the last half of the 20th century, membership of evangelical churches boomed while more traditional church attendance declined; today one-quarter of Americans aged 18-29 (and 16.1% of all Americans) are unaffiliated with any faith. Being unaffiliated is not the same as being atheist or agnostic, but it does suggest a waning of evangelical institutional authority, just as traditional authority in the old-established churches began crumbling several decades ago.

What is “evangelical institutional authority”? Sounds like an oxymoron. In my sociology of religion class in college, I was surprised by how many of my peers declined to identify themselves with a particular denomination, saying “I grew up Methodist” or “I grew up Baptist.” I wonder how many younger evangelicals actually self identify as evangelical when they might say “yes, yes, yes, yes,” to scholars’ four descriptions of what an evangelical looks like.

American evangelicals spearheaded the drive to end slavery.

Yet the Devil can quote Scripture, too: many Americans used it to defend slavery and segregation. And Christian voters eventually rejected the devout, low-church Mr Carter in favour of a divorced movie-star longer on charm than piety. All of which suggests that American Christianity—much like both America and Christianity themselves—is fundamentally neither of the left nor the right, but is capacious enough for all comers.

That’s quite the sweeping conclusion on religion in America based on two elections. The entire piece suffers from the primary view of a political lens without really consulting the religion lens. I know it’s hard to to believe, but religious movements can be a little more complex than presidential elections every four years. Correlation does not mean causation, especially when a reporter tries to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Image of square peg round hole via Shutterstock.

You would think major media outlets might have someone focused on philanthropy, a reporter who can read 990s and spot new trends. Instead, The New York Times eliminated the philanthropy beat, one of the last daily newspapers to employ a full-time reporter to cover national nonprofits, according to a piece in the Chronicle of Philanthrophy.

We’re interested in this new developement with philanthropy and religion sometimes going hand in hand, since religious organizations fill a decent chunk of the philanthropic landscape. As editors have promised in the past with the religion beat, the paper promises to cover philanthropy more across the board.

Stephanie Yera, a spokeswoman for the New York Times Company, said the newspaper would still cover philanthropy-related stories “across news desks.”

For example, she noted that this week Eric Lichtblau wrote an article about a lawsuit over control of the Cato Institute that appeared on the newspaper’s front page. She also noted in an e-mail that “our culture and education desks are regularly churning out stories about philanthropy and nonprofits.”

Sure, newspapers have to prioritize its time and attention, but it seems strange to have entire desks devoted to politics and business and not one person covering philanthropy, demonstrating media outlet’s priorities, what they deem “important.” Of course, a culture or education story could include some sort of philanthropy element, but if a reporter isn’t focused on it, he or she probably won’t know how to spot something unusual. It seems odd that the beat wouldn’t be mentioned as naturally part of politics, since there seem to be so many angles about government partnerships and funding of religious charities (or controversies that lead to a split).

Online sites could pick up the slack, right? The report suggests that there’s a mixed bag when it comes to whether it’s fully replaced the previous print beats.

On the one hand, news Web sites, like the Huffington Post’s Impact page and The Washington Post’s On Giving section, offer more chances for charity leaders to share their perspectives. But hard news and journalism about the field, at least at the national level, seem to be dwindling along with newspaper budgets. … The Post has two reporters who cover local nonprofits on a part-time basis for its Capital Business section.

Reading the piece led me to some clicking around at the Chronicle of Philanthrophy’s website, where I uncovered this potentially helpful blog “Rising Tithe” on religion and giving. A quick scan of the calendar, though, shows that it only survived a few months last summer. What a bummer. The religion page offers a decent starting point for archives, but it’s pretty much dead. Let us know if you know of other sources for religion and philanthropy news.

Back to The Times and whether its move signifies something larger: Is the philanthropy beat gone from general outlets? What are you seeing at your local outlets?

Philanthrophy image via Shutterstock.

As I eye new developments like Google glasses, Google Drive, Google Car, I am fully aware of how much Google permeates my life between my phone, email, docs, maps, reader and more.

As much as Google makes me a little anxious (Why do my search habits follow me around? Will the company suddenly start charging for currently free products?) despite its “Don’t be evil” mantra, its inner-workings intrigue me as much or more as Apple entrances others.

A new piece from the New York Times offers some of those inner workings, focusing on how some employees deal with the stress of working at the company.

Little wonder, then, that among the hundreds of free classes that Google offers to employees here, one of the most popular is called S.I.Y., for “Search Inside Yourself.” It is the brainchild of Chade-Meng Tan, 41, a tall, thin, soft-spoken engineer who arrived at Google in 2000 as Employee No. 107.

Think of S.I.Y. as the Zen of Google. Mr. Tan dreamed up the course and refined it with the help of nine experts in the use of mindfulness at work. And in a time when Google has come under new scrutiny from European and United States regulators over privacy and other issues, a class in mindfulness might be a very good thing.

The class has three steps: attention training, self-knowledge and self-mastery, and the creation of useful mental habits.

If it sounds a bit touchy-feely, consider this: More than 1,000 Google employees have taken the class, and there’s a waiting list of 30 when it’s offered, four times a year. The class accepts 60 people and runs seven weeks.

The Zen of Google, huh? Are there religious underpinnings here?

But what is Mr. Tan’s ultimate goal? A Buddhist for many years, he says without irony that he wants to create world peace. “I was always very different from the other kids,” he says. “I have an I.Q. of 156. I didn’t play sports. I thought big. I thought I could achieve great things. I don’t want to sound megalomaniac, but my whole life is about doing something for the world, from as far back as I can remember.”

Ah ha. There it is. The reporter discovers that Mr. Tan is Buddhist, but the story does little to explain whether the course has Buddhist ideas or even Buddhist motivations behind his desire to spread his thinking.

Born and raised in Singapore, Mr. Tan describes his childhood as “very unhappy.”

“It was the geek thing,” he says. He taught himself how to write software code at the age of 12. And by 15, he had won his first national academic award. At 17, he was one of four members of the national software championship team.

“In Singapore, the way to distinguish yourself is to win competitions,” he says. But public attention and external rewards brought him no satisfaction. “It wasn’t making a difference,” he says. “I wasn’t any happier. There was a compulsion to be the best.”

So was the turning point happen when he became Buddhist? When did that come in? There’s one other brief mention of faith in the story.

Mr. Tan likes to refer to the example of Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk once described by a British newspaper as the happiest person in the world. At first, that rang hollow to Mr. Chang. “Matthieu’s a monk; I don’t want to be a monk,” he says. “But Meng was able to make that bridge for me. He presented S.I.Y. the way we all present to one another: here’s my premise, here’s my control, here’s my experiment.”

There isn’t necessarily an obvious religion angle here, but it could use just a little more detail in the same way that it explains Mr. Tan’s upbringing and eventual employment at Google. Without more, the mention of his faith is like describing his height or the kind of car he drives, color for the story with little connection to the main point of the piece.

Please excuse me while I go sit quietly for long, unproductive minutes. Because Google tells me so.

The question over employee-provided contraception has offered reporters many possible religion and health care angles, offering at least the concept that the two issues can sometimes collide.

For doctors who want to offer a comfortable bedside manner, it might be tricky to strike the right balance when it comes to faith. Earlier this month, Manya Brachear wrote a nice feature for the Chicago Tribune jumping off a new study of how doctors incorporate their own religious beliefs and discuss faith with patients.

After discovering that silence on matters of spirituality left some patients unsatisfied with the care they received at the University of Chicago, two doctors there and four faculty scholars chose to examine how some medical schools either encourage or discourage physicians to integrate their faiths in conversations with patients and their own professional lives. Doctors who set their faith aside, they say, can become disillusioned and less effective.

The piece explains the study’s findings while also uncovering the motivations of the doctors behind it.

Both Curlin and Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, an internist who also serves on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, said they believe that as the gap between health care and religion has widened, the quality of care for patients has diminished.

For Curlin, an evangelical Christian who also is a hospice and palliative care physician, the pursuit is a labor of love and a calling. For Sulmasy, a Catholic, it is an application of lessons learned as a medical ethicist who found that doctors were coming to him for help with existential dilemmas in addition to ethical ones.

Racked with guilt when they make a mistake, grief when they can’t heal a patient, and emptiness when they feel overworked and uninspired, doctors more often than not wrestle with whether it’s right to turn to their faith for comfort or clarification, Sulmasy said.

The thorough story includes a variety of voices, including evangelical, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist doctors, demonstrating different questions they face specific to their respective faiths.

Those who do publicly embrace religion feel alienated and alone, Curlin said.

Both men say policymakers and insurers have perpetuated that sense of alienation by treating health care as nothing more than a business. That has led some doctors to feel unfulfilled. Many seem to have forgotten the calling that led them to medicine, having been urged to abandon that way of thinking and focus on science, Sulmasy said.

Of course, not everyone thinks religious and medicine should mix, and the piece includes that side as well. It’s a nicely balanced piece that includes a variety of voices without making the distinctive faiths seem like they are one.

The study also led to a piece by Menachem Wecker for U.S. News & World Report that opens with an anecdote from when religion was an added benefit between a doctor-patient relationship.

When Hasan Siddiqi saw a patient wearing a head scarf, the fourth year medical student at University of Michigan—Ann Arbor wished her “Assalamu alaikum.” After returning the Arabic greeting, the patient—who, it turned out, attended the same mosque as Siddiqi—asked him about everything from the availability of halal food at the hospital to the proper times and direction to pray.

“That put her more at ease that there was someone at least familiar in this very strange environment,” says Siddiqi, a former president of Michigan’s Muslim Medical Students’ Association. “There was something extra that I had to offer, because I understood some of the rituals and the religious context.”

A head scarf can be an obvious clue, but the piece shows how doctors navigate figuring out whether someone’s religiosity such as a cross or religious leader at one’s side.

Doctors need to be cautious about bringing up religion in a hospital room, just as one does at the dinner table, Siddiqi says. But, he adds, connecting with patients on a variety of levels—including faith—can help physicians see their patients as people rather than as algorithms and can better appreciate the larger context of their ailments.

Connecting with patients on a faith level is something that researchers at the Pritzker School of Medicine at University of Chicago have also found to be important, though often ignored.

The story shows how doctor-patient relationships can form over theological identities.

Hospitals are also places where patients are vulnerable, so it’s inappropriate to missionize to them, Younus says. When one patient asked him for Islamic literature, he politely declined. “Once you’re well, we will get together,” he told the patient.

When he talks to Jewish patients, Zachary Epstein-Peterson, a student at the Medical School at Harvard University, anticipates discussing the Jewish tradition of viewing the “silver lining” in suffering.

If there was room for more, I’d be curious how doctors navigate sensitivities to potential religious opposition to specific treatments. I also wonder whether anyone has measured the level of religiosity among doctors and whether it’s higher or lower than the rest of the population. But both of these pieces give us a nice look that shows the benefits and challenges of faith in the field.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

A few weeks ago, we all sighed in unison over The Atlantic’s piece on the emerging church’s supposed connection to Invisible Children, the group behind the viral video Kony 2012.

The piece had many, many problems, but one of the most glaring ones was the description of Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll as “an Emerging Liberal.”

Sorry, what?

A reader sent us a note that the piece had been updated, a welcome correction after we called for one. But if you go into the piece, you’ll see that not much has been changed. This is the paragraph in question:

Contemporary institutional religion, as opposed to “redemption,” is “the most disgusting false gospel in the world!” Pastor Mark Driscoll, who identifies himself as an Emerging Liberal, declared in a sermon on YouTube.* “Religious people are the ones murdering Jesus.”

You have to go all the way to the bottom of the lengthy article to find the update:

* - This sentence originally identified Mark Driscoll as an “Emerging Liberal” in the Emerging Church movement. According to a spokesperson for Driscoll’s Mars Hill ministry, he was once affiliated with other theologians affiliated with Emerging Liberals, but now identifies himself as an “Emerging Reformer.”

What a joke. It’s like the editor mumbled, “Well, this is what he said, but we don’t really believe him.” Why even bother updating it if you’re not going to completely correct the sentence?

I asked Mars Hill about the correction, and a spokesperson sent me this note:

Their update was a nice gesture, although buried at the bottom of the second page in the “fine print.” It would have made more sense for them to change it in the article with a strikethrough or something more obvious. The writer certainly doesn’t understand the emerging movement, and doesn’t seem to know Pastor Mark very well. However, we are not worried about the quotes they used or how they represent Pastor Mark, other than the liberal label.

This section of the article was enough to set off the alarm bells of many of the commenters that the reporting behind the entire piece. Piece by piece, the article fails to draw clear connections between the emerging church and the organization behind Kony 2012.

Jordan spotted another error I completely missed the first time around. The piece links to an interview by the “Catholic radio station Relevant Radio.” Wait, he means the evangelical magazine Relevant? Oh man. Yet another reason why the editors of The Atlantic should consider just pulling the entire piece off the web.

David commented:

That liberal Mark Driscoll! (No one tell Slate.)

The writer of the Atlantic piece has this bio:

JOSH KRON - Josh Kron is a writer backed in Kampala, Uganda. He covers east Africa and Africa’s Great Lakes Region for The New York Times and has written for Foreign Policy, The Guardian, CNN, and Ha’aretz.

What does it mean by “backed in Kampala”? Is that a typo? Should it be “based”? Is the Atlantic a professional organization?

Mollie responded: “That confused me, too. And set the tone for the entire piece ….”

A friend of mine asked if the quality of journalism is going downhill. It’s too complicated to say across the board, but at The Atlantic, I wonder if there’s a high demand for online content that wouldn’t reach the standards needed for print. I still subscribe and enjoy getting the monthly print edition, but leaving a piece like this on its website does at least some damage to its credibility.