Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
One of the hardest things to teach a journalism student is how to know when to use a paraphrase quote and when to use a direct quote — other than when the length of the story is an issue or you have an out-of-this-world stunner on your hands.
Surveys are tricky things to report, especially when the data is sole sourced, to use a bureaucratic term. Sometimes I get the feeling that those doing the research are stretching a bit to reach their conclusions with the aid of supposedly scientific numbers, and you always have to question to motives of those commissioning the survey.
It has been quite some time since GetReligion plugged one of the weblog offerings of Christianity Today and the omnipresent Ted Olsen.
The first of three 40th-anniversary issues of Rolling Stone is on newsstands now, and it is overflowing with the witty Q&A interviews that make the magazine frequently worthwhile. There’s the requisite kissing of founder Jann S. Wenner’s ring, as nearly every interview involves a moment when an artist describes how important a role the magazine played in wide cultural transformation. The next 40th-anniversary issue will focus on the Summer of Love, and I can imagine people discussing how many times a stray Rolling Stone on the coffee table helped them get laid.
There are GetReligion readers who believe that we praise the Los Angeles Times too much. So let’s poke the left coast giant just a bit this morning (as I sit here in a hotel lobby in Southern California).
The mainstream media explanation for the tragic actions of a young college student in Blacksburg, Va., has been that he was troubled, sick, mentally ill and a textbook case of a school shooter.
What would the news coverage look like if three Muslims were found with their throats slit in an Islamic publishing house in a northern Scotland town? Two victims were citizens of the United Kingdom and one was from Morocco, and the apprehended suspects said they did it for their country because “they are attacking our religion.”
The tragic shootings Monday at Virginia Tech tell a story about life and death, and whenever those subjects are discussed religion will no doubt become involved. Tmatt wrote on Tuesday that the “religion shoe” would soon drop. And as predicted, religion did drop throughout the day’s memorial service.
