Clearly, anyone who wants to understand the modern world (hello administrators at the vast majority of modern seminaries) needs to take a class or two in media literacy.
At the same time, it has become increasingly obvious that most of the journalists who manage newsrooms (hello Dean Baquet of The New York Times) need to have some kind of systematic, professional training in religious literacy.
On the other side of the Atlantic, there is an organization called Lapido Media that is working hard to build bridges to major newsrooms in the United Kingdom and beyond. The Media Project -- the continuing education umbrella project that includes GetReligion.org -- recently cooperated with Lapido Media in an effort to produce a newsroom-friendly book entitled "Religious Literacy: An Introduction." I wrote the final chapter in the book and GetReligion readers that get the book will see many links to themes at this website.
(I should also mention that the headline on the website feature about the book needs to be fixed, since this is not "the first" handbook of this kind, since the Religion News Association -- to give credit where credit is due -- has done similar booklets on this topic in the past, which evolved into the entire ReligionLink project.)
Now, the Lapido team has released an interesting set of feature stories from its website to mark the end of 2016. GetReligion readers with a special interest in global news should click here and check this out.
Some of the subjects include:
'ISLAMIC STATE ARE MUSLIMS, THEIR DOCTRINES ISLAMIC': BBC HEAD
BBC Head of Religion, Aaqil Ahmed chose a Lapido event to clarify the BBC's use of the term 'so-called Islamic State' in our unprecedented most-read article of the year.
Also, this:
ANALYSIS: ASSAD OR THE ISLAMISTS? CHRISTIANS WEIGH THEIR OPTIONS
JOHN Pontifex travelled to Syria to ask the question most journalists refuse to address, on why Church leaders and faithful alike might prefer the Assad regime to the Islamist alternative.
How about one more?
ALTRUISM has become pathological in Europe, but one cannot ignore the role that Christianity and the churches have played in this debacle, argues Catholic writer Ed West.
Just as religion-beat professionals in Europe and elsewhere need to bookmark RNA.org for helpful reference materials and commentary, religion-beat reporters here in American need to bookmark LapidoMedia.com as well.
Check it out.