Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
How delightful is it that both Hillary Clinton and Sam Brownback officially announced their plans to run for the presidency on the same sunny Saturday? Not that the announcements come as a surprise to anyone, but there is a slight irony that these two would share the spotlight.
Frank Lockwood, the religion editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, did what The Washington Post‘s Alan Cooperman didn’t do last week. He did what I didn’t do last week. He actually cracked open the Institute for Religion and Democracy’s booklet analyzing the funding of the National Council of Churches (disclosure notices here, here and here). The National Council of Churches is an association of 35 mainline denominations. IRD accuses the NCC of being beholden to liberal foundations more than the denominations it represents. Last week I disagreed with the way the Post handled IRD’s charges.
What happens at Harvard University matters to journalists covering higher education. Whether you like it or not, as Hahvad goes, the rest of American academia goes, as the saying goes.
The 2006 elections were marked in part by the successes of more than a few pro-life Democrats. Some have wondered how their rhetoric will match up with their voting records. When the House passed a recent bill to expand federal funding of stem-cell research that destroys embryos, 16 pro-life Democrats, including the newly elected Heath Shuler, joined 158 Republicans in voting against it.
If you have been looking for the religion section of The Dallas Morning News under the Features tab on the newspaper’s website, it isn’t there anymore. And if you live in Texas and you’ve been looking for the religion section in the dead-tree-pulp edition of the Saturday newspaper, you won’t find it anymore — at least not in its old section-front format.
The best thing reporters can hear from editors is that they can have as much space as they need to tell the story. In an era of online publishing, this should be the case every time, but I don’t see reporters or their editors using that opportunity all that often.
I was not alone in enjoying David Gonazalez’s first piece on a Pentecostal storefront church in New York City. Although I do note that our posts always receive many more comments when we criticize something than when we praise something. Why is that? I also must note with regret that I haven’t yet read the subsequent installments.
Changing times are threatening for people who are directly affected by the changes. Thus, more than a few journalists are afraid of the World Wide Web and the digital era — with good reason. I mean, the entire news industry is shaking in its boots waiting for somebody, somewhere to create a form of digital advertising more winsome than the pop-up ad. Please.
