The sad reality is that there are many, many newspapers in this fair land that do not have trained, committed, religion-beat specialists. You know, the kind of professional religion scribe who can handle the pressure — year after year — of finding creative news-feature-story hooks for all of those ultra-familiar religious holidays that terrify city-desk editors.

A few years ago, the theologians at the prestigious Young & Rubicam advertising agency circulated, in house, an interesting little document about the sacraments of buying and selling.

Another day, another airport and another newspaper. In this case, I had some time to kill with the Miami Herald in the tiny airport in Key West. There were at least three items in this one issue of the newspaper that could merit GetReligion attention, in my opinion. So I will combine them into one post, starting with the best.

This is a minor little lifestyles feature from last week, but it is still bugging me. There is a ghost in here, methinks. The topic is “third places,” which reporter Sherry Stripling of the Seattle Times defines as: