Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Yes, this is the third GetReligion post on coverage of Mormons in two days. But this post has nothing to do with the handsome Mitt Romney. Its purpose is to highlight an absolutely excellent human interest story that deals with a Mormon and an evangelical Christian.
What is most helpful about Nancy Gibbs’ article on Mitt Romney in the latest issue of Time is her detailed explanation of why Romney faces doubts — not just from some evangelicals, but also from the cultural left:
The Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc and I did have a bit of a debate this week about religion in the latest edition of “The Time 100″ list of the movers and shakers on planet earth.
The Atlantic Monthly cover story on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice — “Grand Illusions” — offers all of the inside details and broad, sweeping conclusions that one would expect.
Terry and I had trouble agreeing on the method of counting religious leaders in “The Time 100: The Most Influential People in the World.” Terry pointed me toward his recent quip about last year’s list:
One of the more nagging questions about the mass killings at Virginia Tech is how the parents of killer Seung-Hui Cho related to him. Their earlier statement to the public clearly expressed agony about their son’s rampage. The Washington Post‘s front-page story from Sunday fills in more blanks, especially regarding the killer’s mother, Hyang In Cho.
If Russell Chandler, retired from the Los Angeles Times, is one of the gold-standard names in traditional religion-beat work, then our second subject represents a much edgier style of reporting from the post-1960s alternative press. The work being done by Julie Lyons in her Bible Girl columns at the Dallas Observer represents a kind of neo-European, advocacy version of the Godbeat in modern niche media.
Yes, yes, yes, your friends at GetReligion got all the emails. We know that you saw Corey Kilgannon’s story in The New York Times about the Rev. Louis Braxton Jr. and his ministry to the “tranny” streetwalkers of Astoria, Queens.
A very strange thing happens when journalists write books — they find themselves (hopefully) being interviewed by other journalists, often before speeches and other (hopefully) book-promoting events. Soon thereafter, they often read articles based on these interviews and find themselves exclaiming, “Wait just a (provide colorful descriptive words here) minute, I didn’t say that!”
