Jim Davis

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And the Godbeat goes on: Yet another veteran is forced out

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Insult + injury? It could look that way, but it was probably just a blunder by the Tampa Tribune. The newspaper set out a tradeshow table at a community event May 15, prominently showing a poster of Faith and Values writer Michelle Bearden — six days after she was laid off. “Perhaps this means I got my job back and no one told me,” Michelle commented dryly on her Facebook page.

Her layoff, one of six from the newsroom that week, ends a much-honored specialty career of 20 years just in Tampa. By my estimate, Michelle was also the last fulltime veteran newspaper religion reporter in Florida.

Michelle will be hard to replace with her several hats. Besides the print edition, she did a weekly segment, Keeping the Faith, for WFLA-TV. She also did video presentations and interactive items for TBO.com, the newspaper’s online version.


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Is Cardinal Dolan's star fading? The New York Times 'somes' it up

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I’ve just made up a rule for reading news: The confidence a writer places in an article is inversely proportional to the number of times he/she uses “some.” Such words often substitute for actual findings. I know, because I occasionally did it myself as a reporter. But I’m not sure I used it six times in one story, as did a New York Times article on Cardinal Timothy Dolan and his place in the Catholic power structure.

The story’s basic assessment is that Cardinal Timothy Dolan was Pope Benedict XVI’s American culture warrior, fighting trends like abortion and same-sex marriage. Benedict was also fine with Dolan’s upper-middle-class lifestyle, and with Dolan delegating archdiocesan matters to his vicars instead of handling them himself.

But with a new pope in town, Dolan — well, isn’t on the outs, exactly; he’s just out of step with the newer, humbler, more pastoral church of Pope Francis. So says the Times.


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The pope and the Palestinians: AP tries balanced reporting

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As Pope Francis prepares to visit the Holy Land this weekend, the Associated Press takes a stab at balance in a story on West Bank Palestinians — a report that nevertheless leaves a number of holes. The story at first walks the beaten path of the Palestinian plight — poverty, crowded camps, unemployment — but for once, it isn’t all blamed on Israel:

Many feel increasingly neglected by the Palestinian self-rule government and the United Nations agency responsible for their welfare. Resentment can be seen in the rise in stone-throwing protests by camp youths and a recent two-month strike of thousands of local employees of the U.N. aid agency demanding higher wages.

The article does play a familiar note: the supposed right of return of Palestinians to their homeland.


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The Atlantic finds new sect: Southern Baptist Convention

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Maybe someone at The Atlantic was trying to be clever or just writing too fast. Or maybe its online article about the Southern Baptist Convention told a subtler story: a condescending attitude toward the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. “Baptists, Just Without the Baptisms,” quips the headline, rather exaggerated but still arguable if you want to get readers’ attention. The included bar graph does show rates have been falling fairly steadily since 1999. The article also tells of failures to baptize most members between 12 and 29 years old.

But those of us who care about words found our eyes drawn elsewhere in the piece. First, the subhead:

A task force of Southern Baptist ministers reports its finding on the sect’s declining rate of dunkings, saying, “We have a spiritual problem.”


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Persecution in India: It matters only if it's about Muslims

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Nice to know the New York Times cares so much about religious freedom in India — at least for Muslims. “For Nation’s Persecuted Muslim Minority, Caution Follows Hindu Party’s Victory,” warns a headline in an 1,100-plus-word story on that nation’s elections Friday. And the newspaper wastes no time in sympathizing, with these as the third and fourth paragraphs:

Discrimination against Muslims in India is so rampant that many barely muster outrage when telling of the withdrawn apartment offers, rejected job applications and turned-down loans that are part of living in the country for them. As a group, Muslims have fallen badly behind Hindus in recent decades in education, employment and economic status, with persistent discrimination a key reason. Muslims are more likely to live in villages without schools or medical facilities and less likely to qualify for bank loans.

Now, after a landslide electoral triumph Friday by the Bharatiya Janata Party of Hindu nationalists, some Muslims here said they were worried that their place in India could become even more tenuous.


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Horny dads at a prom: Too juicy to get the whole religion story

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Let’s talk about Clare, the homeschooled teenager in Richmond, Va., who was thrown out of a prom because of her dress. The facts are … Well, actually, we don’t know many of the facts, whatever you may have read in “news” accounts. Nearly all of them are based purely on her blogging rant about the flap.

In one of the most shameful abuses of social media ever, story after story takes as gospel truth how the girl conformed to the dance dress code, yet was thrown out by horny dads and intolerant chaperones. Even The Telegraph in London had to get in on the act, from across the Atlantic.

The Telegraph’s may be the cheapest, most garish version:


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Nuanced portrait of a rising Catholic star: Cardinal Donald Wuerl

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Well, darn. Someone in the media remembers that there are other Catholic leaders besides Pope Francis. For a recent profile in the Washington Post, it’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl. The head of the influential Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., received a long-form, 1,500-word look in his hometown newspaper, The Washington Post. That in itself is a welcome change from wire style: The Associated Press has announced that most of its stories will henceforth run 300-500 words.

Blending a seasoned eye with a fluid writing style, Michelle Boorstein of the Post packs several sage observations into a few paragraphs:

With his unassuming and reserved style, Wuerl is not a well-known figure to the region’s growing number of Catholics, many of whom probably don’t realize that their leader is one of the world’s most influential bishops. Pope Benedict had already named the slender 73-year-old in 2010 to craft the church’s modern-day evangelization message, but Pope Francis in December further solidified Wuerl’s stature by picking him as the only new American on the powerful, 30-member Vatican body that selects bishops.


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Devil in the details: WPost on Francis teaching about Satan

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The current head of the Catholic Church has often shocked liberals by showing he actually believes Catholic dogma. In the newest chapter of this saga, Pope Francis spooks ‘em by preaching traditional doctrines about Satan. An account of this situation by the Washington Post isn’t half bad. Written by Anthony Faiola, the Post‘s London bureau chief, it skims the pope’s pronouncements on the devil and quotes a couple of worriers. But Faiola also quotes a couple of believers, including attendees at a conference on exorcism that’s the clear time peg for this article.

The article doesn’t start out promising: “A darling of liberal Catholics and an advocate of inclusion and forgiveness, Pope Francis is hardly known for fire and brimstone.” But it gains depth and shows savvy.

Faiola alertly notes how Francis shows an awareness of how un-trendy is the belief about Satan. He has the pope paraphrasing critics: “But Father, how old-fashioned you are to speak about the Devil in the 21st century.”


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Getting a feel for the whole elephant in that Mississippi law

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You know that ancient story about the blind men groping their way around an elephant? Well, sometimes the men are also unaware of each other — even here at GetReligion. Last weekend I saw an AP story about the reaction to Mississippi’s new religious freedom law. Gay businessmen and their friends took such offense, they started putting up blue window stickers in protest — even though the law said nothing about homosexuality.

“Wow, this’ll be fun to carve apart,” I thought, not realizing that Bobby Ross Jr. had already done so. The article I read was a repost of the one he saw.

Yet our reviews offer different views on the partial blindness in Mississippi — and how the AP didn’t help clear things up before quoting the protesters.


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