Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I have to admit that I had mixed feelings when the Rt. Rev. Douglas Leblanc, co-founder of this weblog long ago, dropped me a note to let me know that GetReligion had been selected as one of the top 100 “religion blogs” in a report by the Social Science Research Council.
Almost exactly three years ago, we were looking at some of the breathless media coverage of a documentary that claimed to have found the tomb of Jesus. Daniel Pulliam covered the saga at the time and here’s a snippet from one of his posts (headlined “James Cameron to Christians: It’s over“):
If you’re part of an organization trying to get your message out, you usually have to spend money to place ads where people can see them. Communications shops usually prefer getting stories written about them. Not only is it free but you can communicate more thoroughly with your audience. So while Focus on the Family seems to have been running more advertisements as of late, they have to be taking note of all the earned media they’re getting.
Semester after semester, I tell my students at the Washington Journalism Center that some of the hardest news stories to cover — period — are personnel disputes inside private colleges and universities. The simple fact of the matter is that the administrations on these campuses do not have to talk about the proceedings in these cases and, often, they cannot talk about the facts of these cases because of valid legal concerns about privacy.
I’ve long been fascinated by the “new evidence” stories. These are the sensationalized religion stories about how, you know, Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier . . . named Pantera, and so on.
Years ago, I wrote a Scripps Howard News Service column about a pagan mother and some of the parenting choices that she was making during an age in which pop-culture was becoming increasingly fascinated with its own glitzy few of witchcraft and wizardry. It was a Mother’s Day column.
I am sad (and slightly stressed out) to report that we have some more changes ahead here at GetReligion.
A neurobiologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville is accused of killing three colleagues on Friday. She opened fire at a faculty meeting and also injured other faculty. The full story is still coming out and, as the New York Times put it in a headline, “Twists Multiply in Alabama Shooting Case.” She fatally shot her brother 20-plus years ago and some question how the case was handled by the police. And she and her husband were questioned, though not charged, in a bombing incident at Harvard.
Remember that recent burst of coverage about the Vatican being interested in aliens and, thus, the question of whether little green men would, or would not, have eternal souls?
