Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Long ago, while I was working in Charlotte, the editors in my newsroom decided to do one of those sure-to-win-awards projects in which they would use hard statistics, personal interviews and a strong spine of new poll data to answer a big question.
intercede: To plea on someone else’s behalf; To act as a mediator in a dispute; to arbitrate or mediate
Let me begin with the obvious: A merry, merry 12th day of Christmas to one and all, if you are among the handful of Western Christians who mark this as the end of the traditional Christmas season (as opposed to the nonsectarian season between the first showing of “Elf” on cable TV and the first day of Christmas, which is Dec. 25).
This pair of stories has been around for a long time, stashed away in my thick GetReligion guilt file (which needs its own logo or something). I haven’t written about these two stories because I have not been able to figure out what I want to say. Logical enough?
Before we dive into the actual 12 days of Christmas — don’t forget to send URLs of any mainstream coverage — let’s look at another really interesting story from a big week for religion news in the Washington Post. The headline was crisp and to the point, if somewhat dry for such an interesting piece:
The other day we looked at how religion news can appear in a review of a museum exhibit — that is, outside of news pages. Last week a reader noted a couple of advice columns that discussed religion. The Oakland Tribune’s “Growing Older” column discussed holidays for people who are not religious. And the Washington Post‘s Carolyn Hax had a religion-themed advice column. Here’s the last question and answer:
When we look at how the media writes about religion, we focus on news stories. But that’s only one of the ways the mainstream media discuss religion, of course. Even apart from the op-ed page — which we tend to stay away from unless there’s some breaking news there — there are photos, graphs, art reviews, advice columns and so on.
As you would expect, I spend a very high percentage of my time surrounded by religious believers of various kinds — especially academic leaders from the middle of the evangelical Protestant world (and Eastern Orthodox folks from my own parish).
As I mentioned the other day, the Mattinglys of Ferndale, MD, received waves of really strange robo telephone calls before the election — since one adult in the house is a registered Republican and the other is a Democrat. We got ‘em all, folks.
