Journalism

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Grappling with "life issues"

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Yesterday was the annual March for Life. This is a large annual event where people come in from all over the country — and world — to march to the Supreme Court on the anniversary of the date it handed down Roe V. Wade. This has been going on for almost 40 years and it’s been covered poorly for many of those years. This year was brutally cold and wet and yet the crowds were still there, marching as they always do. They may have been wondering why the Supreme Court hadn’t handed down the decision in June instead of January, but they were there.


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Santorum stunner at Florida church!

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One of the first things that I do with student journalists is teach them the following trick. If you are struggling with some particularly tough passage in a story, perhaps a tricky paraphrase with some complicated grammar, then it is wise to print a copy of your rough draft, walk away from the keyboard and read the stuff out loud. Most of the time, your ears will catch the mistakes.


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Pod people: Endorsing the chosen one

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My father — a newspaper professional adapting to the digital age — considers his kids his personal information technology help desk, so we’re regularly helping him update his iPhone apps or showing him a new trick.


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Gingrich and the evangelical vote

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I’m usually not very good at political prognostication but last week I told my husband that I thought Newt Gingrich would win in South Carolina. He laughed at me. Well look who’s laughing now! Actually, I have no idea who is laughing, but I do know that the entire DC political class of media and pundit types are freaking out about what happened. It was pretty interesting to watch Twitter reactions from all types as they process that Republican voters might not be ready to settle on Mitt Romney.


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Egypt's moderate and puritanical Muslims

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In recent days, some news has sputtered out of Nigeria about the horrific ongoing attacks perpetrated by Boko Haram. Many journalists have been pooh-poohing claims by the U.S. and Nigerian governments that Boko Haram is tied to al Qaeda. See, for example, this Reuters report headlined “Analysis: Nigeria’s Boko Haram ups game but no Al Qaeda.” Now that we’re learning more about the widespread coordinated attacks on Christians and other targets (the death toll is at least 162 in this Associated Press report), I sure hope to see more in-depth coverage of what’s happening there.


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Another Raven player, another holy ghost

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The other day, I posted a blog about Baltimore Ravens cornerback Cary Williams, a young man with a remarkable and at times tragic life story. The plot changed for the better, however, when he went to live with a relative who turned out to be an ordained minister, even if the Baltimore Sun didn’t seem interested in that particular angle of the story. There was tons of evidence that faith played a major role in this story, yet very little of that information made it into ink.


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Womenpriests in the balance

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I would love to stop covering Roman Catholic Womenpriest stories but in order to do that, they have to stop being written in such hacktastic manner. Take this one from the Fort Myers News-Press, headlined “Fort Myers woman defies church to become priest.”


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Dangerous wives of priests? Not going there folks ...

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So what we have here is precisely the kind of editorial, op-ed, slanted, European-style, advocacy New York Times piece that makes many GetReligion readers spew their coffee and exclaim, “What in the %#@$%^ *&^$ is going on here? This is terrible! I can’t wait to see what the GetReligion gang has to say about this!”


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