Godbeat

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Homo sapiens in the newsroom: The struggle to get complicated stories early, yet accurate

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Hope I'm not too far out on on a limb if I argue that, despite the growth of news hound-algorithms, journalists remain run-of-the-mill Homo sapiens. That is to say we are fated to struggle with making sense of the world we have appointed ourselves to explain using the same cognitive tools as everyone else. We have no magical aptitude for insight.

Magical thinking, of course, is another matter.

I'm referring to journalists who claim adherence to traditional American-style journalism for breaking news stories, as opposed to analysis or opinion pieces. Nor am I talking about the Web's evolving free-form paradigm. I'm talking about old-school "American model of the press" journalism that's theoretically balanced and far-minded, strives for accuracy, is consciously unbiased and tries not to get ahead of the known facts.

For this sort of journalist two currently ongoing and important questions are, when is it appropriate to link a terror act to Muslims or Islam, and what is the line between a reasonable conclusion and Islamophobia?


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So they are back in the news (yet again): Adam and Eve and all that

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On the religion beat, the news often consists of new books about old texts with old stories, and the oldest old story of them all is the Genesis portrayal of Adam and Eve. Their status as the first humans and parents of the entire human race is a big biblical deal, especially for evangelical Protestants. 

Since no evangelical school outranks Wheaton College (Illinois) in prestige and influence, journalists should get ready for an incendiary device about to explode in March. 

A book by Wheaton Old Testament Professor John H. Walton will upend many traditional -- or certainly "evangelical" -- ideas about Adam and Eve.  Moreover, “The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate” comes from the certifiably evangelical InterVarsity Press. Click here for the online press kit (.pdf).

Walton (Ph.D., Hebrew Union College) formerly taught at the Moody Bible Institute, which professes that “the first human beings were a special and unique creation by God as contrasted to being derived from any pre-existing life forms. Further, God created everything ‘after its kind,’ which excludes any position that allows for any evolutionary process between kinds.” As a Wheaton professor since 2001, he’s required to reaffirm each year the “biblical doctrine” that “God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race,” who were “distinct from all other living creatures.” 


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What is news? NASCAR America collides, at National Prayer Breakfast, with NPR America

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What is news? NASCAR America collides, at National Prayer Breakfast, with NPR America

About a third of a century ago, back when I was doing graduate work in mass communications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, I started calling up editors and asking them a simple question: Why doesn't your newsroom -- mostly newspapers, back then -- do more to cover religion news?

These interviews ended up being part of my graduate project, which was edited down and ran as a massive cover story -- "The Religion Beat: Out of the ghetto, into the mainsheets" -- at the professional journal called The Quill. 

Editors gave me all kinds of reasons for their limited coverage of the Godbeat, but there were two reasons that I heard more than any other:

(1) Religion news is too boring (and no one wants to cover it).

(2) Religion news is too controversial (and causes our readers to get too riled up and they write too many leaders to the editor).

And there you had it: The world was just full -- too full, it seemed -- of boring, controversial religion stories. Between the lines, these journalists seem to be saying that religion was boring to THEM, yet they could not figure out why THEIR READERS seemed to care so much about it. Thus, the strange blend of boredom and controversy.

I thought about that this week when "Crossroads" podcast host Todd Wilken and I were talking about that controversial speech that President Barack Obama gave at the recent National Prayer Breakfast.


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Brian Williams, Saint John Paul II, Charlton Heston, Kevin Bacon and, well, me

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Remember that game that was so hot a few years ago, the whole "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing? One of the fun things about hanging out with experienced journalists is that you can play a similar game, based on who has interviewed who.

For example, as a religion writer I have interviewed Billy Graham. That puts me one degree of separation away from, what, half of the famous people in world culture in the second half of the 20th century? Or, in music, I have interviewed Dave Brubeck. Stop and think about that one, in terms of links to music royalty dating back into the early 20th century.

However, journalists do like to sweat the details.

For example, I have asked Tom Hanks a question in a live press conference. Is that the same thing as "meeting" Hanks? Perhaps you shook hands with the Archbishop of Canterbury and asked a quick question. Is that the same thing as "interviewing" him? How about a telephone interview with Robert Duvall? Twice? Is that the same as "meeting" him?

I attended the 1987 meeting between St. John Paul II and media leaders in Hollywood and greater Los Angeles, sneaking in with a pass from a Rocky Mountain News editor (a national officer in a press association) who was not able to attend. At the end, the pope moved down the aisle greeting people and shaking hands. I had a chance to shake his hand but, well, I let Charlton Heston get in front of me. You can't fight the voice of God, right? I did speak a greeting to the pope and he nodded. But is that "meeting" the pope?

Where am I going with this? To the latest wrinkles in the sad story of Brian Williams, of course.


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No surprise, but Godbeat pro Peter Smith produces excellent story on married Eastern Catholic priests

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"Rejoice, there is life after Ann Rodgers in Pittsburgh!"

So said regular GetReligion reader Jerry N., who emailed us a link to Peter Smith's latest piece of top-notch Godbeat journalism for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Smith, of course, spent 13 years as the religion writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal. He joined the Post-Gazette in 2013, succeeding Rodgers, Pittsburgh's longtime "queen of religion news." The two swept top honors in the metropolitan newspapers division of last year's Religion Newswriters Association contest. Just a few months ago, we featured Smith in a 5Q+1 interview about his in-depth reporting project on immigrant religious communities in Pittsburgh.

So yes, we at GetReligion are big fans of Smith — and of the Post-Gazette's strong commitment to the religion beat.


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Your weekend think piece: Do you know, when you see yarmulkes, how to read between the lines?

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OK, it's flashback time.

Remember when you were in high school, on in college, and you could walk the halls of your school, or gaze around the cafeteria, and pretty much know who was who just by one or two items of their clothing? You know, to cite one obvious example from my generation of Texas guys, little golden alligators and boat shoes vs. leather vests and boots?

I love reading pieces that take this kind of inside-baseball knowledge of people and symbolism and tell me something new about life on the religion beat. Thus, I want to point readers toward a fascinating little think piece at The Forward that ran under the headline: "Show Me Your Yarmulke: Everything You Wanted To Know About Jewish Headgear."

The thesis and some crucial background information:

... You can tell a lot about a Jewish male by the type of yarmulke (also referred to as a kippah, or in Hasidic Yiddish, kapl) that he wears. ...


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There Pope Francis goes again: Madonna of the rabbit

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Pope Francis’ remark about Catholics breeding like rabbits is a joy.

Just when I reach the point of indifference and exhaustion with religion reporting, the pope breathes life into journalism. He makes me laugh. What a grand fellow he is, and a misunderstood one.

The casual comment given to the press during his flight home from Manila has sparked great press interest. One might have heard the rabbit remark from Ian Paisley and other hard-nosed Protestants a generation ago. Today such comments are heard in the last bastions of anti-Catholic prejudice: the faculty lounge and press room.
 
Reuters has a nicely written report on Francis and rabbits, which summarizes the story and the difficulties of reporting on Pope Francis. He combines high and low culture in his comments, mixing pastoral and theological categories, church and secular language. The problem for reporters is discerning into which category to place his words.
 
The Reuters piece begins:

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) -- Catholics should not feel they have to breed "like rabbits" because of the Church's ban on contraception, Pope Francis said on Monday, suggesting approved natural family planning methods.


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Deseret News editorial: Religion news is real news -- so there

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As I mentioned earlier this week, GetReligion turned 11 on Feb. 2 and I noted that with a salute to the late journalist and pastor Arne Fjeldstad, the leader of The Media Project that backs this weblog, who died earlier this year. I also mentioned a major religious literacy conference for journalists and diplomats -- fittingly called "Getting Religion" -- held recently in England.

I wrote a pair of "On Religion" columns (here and here) about that conference that, among other voices, quoted Dr. Jenny Taylor, the founder of the Lapido Media network. I mention that because one of those Universal syndicate columns ("Ignore religion's role in real news in the real world? That's 'anti-journalism' ") let to something that I don't think I have ever seen before.

That would be a major editorial in a daily newspaper that warns the press not to ignore religion news. No, really.

The newspaper in question is The Deseret News in Salt Lake City, which is, of course, not your normal daily city newspaper. I should also mention that, as of a year ago, former GetReligionista Mark Kellner has worked in that newsroom helping produce its expanded religion-news coverage.

So here is that editorial.


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Define 'mainstream,' give three examples: Joshua Harris kisses nondenominational evangelicalism good-bye?

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If you have never heard of the book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye," by Joshua Harris, then you probably didn't know any homeschooling parents during the past generation or so. Whether you agreed with this 2003 bestseller or not, it would be hard to imagine a more counter-cultural book being jammed into the backpacks of legions of American teen-agers.

This was especially true if you had friends who attended one of those nondenominational, often "seeker friendly," generic or community churches that had vaguely biblical names on the signs out in their vast suburban front lawns.

The essence of nondenominational evangelicalism is its tendency to be defined by inspirational celebrities and the media products that they produce. If that is the cast, then Joshua Harris -- the man behind the book with the classy hat on the front -- had his share of years in that niche-marketing spotlight.

Thus, I genuinely appreciated the recent Washington Post piece that dug into the decision by Harris to step away from his nondenominational life and reboot his approach to ministry. However, before we look at this story, we do need to take a look at a rather strange word in that headline:

Pastor Joshua Harris, an evangelical outlier, heads to mainstream seminary


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