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Once again the terrorism story of the day is drenched in blood and religion, yet it is hard to know how the mainstream press should respond. The faces are are so familiar by now, with 57 dead and more than 100 wounded.
About a year ago down in South Florida, I did a Scripps Howard column about young American Jews visiting Israel. One of the young people I interviewed was a 28-year-old cheeseburger devotee who was only hours away from her flight to Tel Aviv. She had made the decision to move to Israel for good.
Riots by their very nature are difficult for a journalist to cover. They are confusing, widespread, hectic and dangerous for everyone. Riots are kind of like war, except the rioters don’t wear uniforms and are generally difficult people to interview.
As my colleagues here at GetReligion would tell you, about once a week or so I sent around a frustrated note on top of a news story or two linked to the conflict between the extremists that many now call Islamists and other religious believers, from Jews to Christians, from secular Muslims to Western Muslims.
Once again, let me share an angry parable (with a timely tweak). Some of you don’t think it’s appropriate and I know that. But I do. So here goes (with a hat tip to Pat Sajak, of course).
Maybe it’s just that time of the year for the Los Angeles Times, but two stories over the past few days covering remarkably similar subjects seem a bit more than a coincidence.
The October 17 issue of The New Yorker features an extended profile of Jørn Utzon, the Pritzker Award-winning architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. The profile, written by Geraldine Brooks, focuses on how Utzon was dismissed from the Sydney project because of tensions with a minister of public works who was elected midway through the building project.
I don’t know about you, but every now and then I get two emails and, because I read them back to back, they become connected. This happened today, when I reached Jackson, Tenn., to visit Union University. I thinned out the deluge of email from the previous day or so and then started reading.
Perhaps one of the more difficult questions asked in journalism — there are the traditional five Ws and the H — is the “Why” question. The contrast in this Washington Post story, on the likely increase of suicide bombers in Iraq during Ramadan, between the way the holy month used to be in Iraq and the way it is today is striking. The details the author uses are also quite gory:
