“Pastor who opposes homosexuality may get Chicago City Council seat,” the Chicago Tribune reported with a mouthful of a headline (and that’s the shortened version).
A politician's promise
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Gay marriage debate about more than politics
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization founded 52 years ago by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been thrust into the gay marriage debate by its Los Angeles president, who last year campaigned against an amendment to the California constitution prohibiting gay marriage.
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Leaving God at Jackson's funeral
Living in Los Angeles, it has been easy to think that for the past two weeks there has been no news but Michael Jackson news. The King of Pop has reigned supreme over nightly newscasts and Internet rumors and A1 centerpieces. So I was more than a bit surprised to survey other major West Coast newspapers last night and find that most didn’t even bother sending a reporter to the Staples Center to cover Jackson’s larger-than-life memorial service.
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God and Steve McNair
It’s not a surprise, but Nashville police today classified the deaths of former NFL MVP Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi as a murder-suicide, with Kazemi killing McNair because she suspected he was having an affair with another woman — no, not his wife — and then turning the gun she had just bought on herself.
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Michael Jackson: seeker
There has been no shortage of news stories about the anticipated religious overtones of Michael Jackson’s funeral later today at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. (The New York Daily News reported yesterday that the family had stalemated on what religion meant most to MJ, so the service would be God free.)
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Elephant in this evangelical analysis
When I was an intern at the Ventura County Star, an editor taught me to avoid writing ledes that require weak modifiers like “may.” The same goes for headlines that end with a question mark. It’s a cheap trick designed to imply a big story that really isn’t there — though I will admit I use it often when blogging.
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A pastor and his pay
The Rev. Brad Braxton’s trials at Manhattan’s famed Riverside Church have been much reported since a few members of the congregation unsuccessfully sued their new pastor in April for receiving a pay and compensation package that exceeded $600,000 annually.
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Adulterers who pray together ...
The saga of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford keeps getting stranger. Today we learned that when Sanford ostensibly came clean at his tearful press conference last week that he was, in fact, still lying.
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'... and the subject was death'
The Column One slot on the Los Angeles Times frontpage is, according to a compilation of these tales, “a daily jolt of all-engrossing storytelling without rival in American journalism.” Unfortunately, too much emphasis is occasionally placed on the storytelling and too little on the journalism.
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