Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
One of the most poignant and complex stories in America the last few days has been the prolonged outpouring of grief at Penn State University for the legendary and, in some people’s minds fallen, football coach Joseph Paterno. The final memorial service drew 12,000 people and, naturally, it included remarks that touched on the Catholic faith of the deceased.
Court cases often provide story ideas for profiles of individuals and motivations behind church/state battles, but profiling one side can risk making everyone else look like the monster out to get the hero. For instance, it’s hard not to feel bad for Jessica Ahlquist, an outspoken atheist who successfully sued to get a prayer removed from her high school auditorium after reading the New York Times profile. After all, a state representative called her âan evil little thing,â according to the story.
A story from the Northwest today reminded me of the show Mad Men, where you might imagine executives from the show’s advertising agency coming up with the perfect perk for airline passengers in the 1960s. You could almost see Don Draper talking about why offering prayer cards for passengers offers a sense of nostalgia, tapping into a deeper bond with a product.
One of the news items creating buzz inside the DC Beltway this week is a national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post exploring the lives and beliefs of African-American women.
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.
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.
Confession No. 1: There are times when I am reading a story in a major newspaper and, after two or three paragraphs, I am seized with this premonition that the story is going to be “haunted,” that there is a religious “ghost” linked to this topic and that journalists are not going to see it.
The political cycle has inevitably generated endorsement after endorsement, and trigger-happy reporters appear ready to jump on nearly every backing from anyone who self-identifies as an evangelical. With 60 percent of South Carolina voters describing themselves as evangelicals, reporters are hoping to provide a clue as to how those votes might fall on Saturday.
A story nearly made for a book or a movie made the rounds a few weeks ago, when the Associated Press reported that a black church won a court battle against the owner of a Ku Klux Klan shop.
