Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
This morning I asked my sports reporter husband if he knew who Jeremy Lin was. He laughed and responded: “Do you know who Billy Graham is?” Feeling a little silly, I started reading up on the couch-surfing basketball star who is apparently taking the world by storm, or at least the NBA. “Forget Tebowing,” the Associated Press says. “Linsanity is the new sports sensation.”
A story is not the same thing as a report. A report might give you all the facts you need to know (the five W’s and H). But a story tells a tale. A story has characters, details, insight. There’s a beginning, a middle, an end.
Yesterday, a retired general was supposed to speak at a prayer breakfast but withdrew after backlash from various groups. This piece from the New York Times covering Lt. Gen William Boykin’s withdrawal has been sitting in my guilt file because of the complexities involved.
This lengthy Washington Post sports feature about Matt Rutherford’s amazing attempt to sail — solo, in a small boat — all the way around North and South America had me locked up the minute I read that he had named his boat the Saint Brendan.
As you would imagine, the new memoir by former White House intern Mimi Alford about her affair with President John F. Kennedy is causing a lot of buzz, even though the scope of Kennedy’s philandering has long been rumored, documented and then dismissed in Beltway circles.
With books like “Heaven is for Real” on the New York Times bestseller list, it’s no wonder reporters might gravitate toward stories of death, resurrection, heaven and everything else that touches the topic. A reader sent us a piece that neglects to mention quite a few details in trying to retell a resurrection-like story.
It is with a certain sense of fear and trembling that I note that The New Yorker has published a long, detailed and emotionally devastating feature story on the Rutgers University case involving Dharun Ravi and the late Tyler Clementi. The double-deck headline on this “Reporter At Large” feature by Ian Parker is simple and eloquent:
We don’t usually deal with columns here at GetReligion, but every once in a while, one touches at the core of why we exist, the reason why we advocate so much for religion in the daily newspaper.
Sometimes it’s easy to spot those stories where you think, “Wow, you should not try to tackle that subject in 5,000 words.” Or 500 words. Or three minutes.
