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The Los Angeles Times misses wrestler's prayer refrain: 'Christ is in me, I am enough'

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Does anyone have time for yet another Rio 2016 religion-news post?

One of the responses that your GetReligionistas hear when we criticize the faith-shaped holes in mainstream news coverage goes something like this: You guys just aren't realistic. In today's age of short, quickie digital journalism -- with journalists dashing off three or four stories and 10 tweets a day -- reporters just don't have the time and space to add secondary, deep-background details about religion and stuff.

Or words to that effect. Trust me, we understand the pressures, in an age when the advertising crisis in mass media has left fewer reporters in mainstream newsrooms, while the World Wide Web demands more and more 24/7 content. We know that reality issue is there.

The veteran scribes here at GetReligion -- with nearly 200 years worth of experience in religion news, when you add us all up -- can see the challenges. Trust me, we know that people on beats that bump into religious content, from arts to politics, from sports to business, don't have the time to write religion feature stories.

But they do have time to listen to what people say and then include a few details and quotes about faith, when it is clear that these details are at the heart of a person's life and work.

Take team USA wrestler Helen Maroulis, whose win over three-time Olympic champion Saori Yoshida of Japan was -- in one NBC soundbite -- something like an unknown sprinter beating Usain Bolt (that Catholic mega-star from Jamaica) in the 100 meters.

Now, it helps to know that Maroulis has been training for several years in Southern California. Thus, you would expect The Los Angeles Times to be anxious to tune her in and capture the essence of this huge Olympics upset. So here is some key material at the top of a feature about the gold-metal winner:


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Battling cancer, major-league coach puts faith into action — but what exactly does that mean?

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This is an inspiring story.

For those concerned about holy ghosts in the mainstream press, it's also a frustrating story.

I'm talking about a heart-tugging feature from the Dallas Morning News on a major-league coach battling cancer.

As a longtime Texas Rangers fan, I'm particularly drawn to this emotional profile by one of my favorite baseball writers. The subhead on the print version noted that third-base coach Tony Beasley sees his cancer ordeal "as a chance to put faith into action."

ARLINGTON -- This is how he has spent his season: chemotherapy treatment during spring training, five weeks of radiation in April and May and, in the next week, a five-hour surgical procedure to remove the remnants of a tumor from his bowel.
And this is how Tony Beasley describes the year: "My most rewarding in baseball."
Beasley is the Rangers' third-base coach in title, but he's had to move into more of a quality-control role for this season during a fight with cancer that is stretching into its eighth month. The disease may have turned his role upside down, but he'll be damned if it's going to do the same to him.
"It doesn't sound right to [call it rewarding] when you are dealing with a disease; you don't relate that to a reward," Beasley said. "But there has been so much good on so many fronts.
"Somebody once told me not to see obstacles, only opportunities. And this has given me the opportunity to be the man who I said I am. I've always said I'm a man of faith, but we can say things and not live it. This has given me a chance to live it. I'm thankful if people have had a chance to see it."

That's powerful writing, but I want to know more about Beasley's faith.


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Haunted house Olympics: How many of the faith-driven stories did you see in Rio coverage?

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For many Rio 2016 viewers, it was the emotional peak of the entire Olympics.

I am referring to what happened -- far from the finish line -- during a preliminary heat for the women’s 5,000-meter run. That was when Abbey D’Agostino of team USA collided with Nikki Hamblin of New Zealand.

Both went down. D’Agostino didn't know it, but she had a torn ACL. Nevertheless, she stopped and helped Hamblin. Together -- with the American runner clearly injured -- they finished the race. D’Agostino left the track in a wheelchair and, later, was not able to accept an offer by Olympic judges allowing both runners to run in the final because of their fine sportsmanship.

That's the story that everyone knows about, the drama that left viewers coping with tears. But why did D’Agostino stay behind to help, as the pack ran off into the distance? Catholic News Service looked for that angle, which was not hard to find:

“Although my actions were instinctual at that moment, the only way I can and have rationalized it is that God prepared my heart to respond that way. This whole time here he’s made clear to me that my experience in Rio was going to be about more than my race performance – and as soon as Nikki got up I knew that was it.”
She had previously recounted how her reliance on God helped calm her anxiety before a big race. “Whatever the outcome of the race is, I’m going to accept it. ... I was so thankful and just drawn to what I felt like was a real manifestation of God’s work in my life.” She told Hanlon that previous injuries forced her “to depend on God in a way that I’ve never been open to before.”

Did anyone see that angle in mainstream coverage? Actually, one or two major newsrooms saw that religion ghost and ran with it, including Sports Illustrated online. But not many.

I was exchanging emails with a media professional the other day and mentioned that there was no way GetReligion could have done posts on all of the valid, and often crucial, religion-angle stories that received little, if any, news coverage during Rio 2016. I have never received so many contacts from readers about a subject, pointing me toward more and more URLs with other Olympics religion angles worthy of note. It was like one giant haunted house of religion-ghost stories.


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Some news skills never die: An obituary writer describes life on the death beat

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Some news skills never die: An obituary writer describes life on the death beat

Obituary writing is an all-important corner of the news game. We are talking “first draft of history” and all that.

A key practitioner, Bruce Weber of The New York Times, is leaving the beat following eight years and 1,000 salutes to the dear departed. With considerable charm, he recently described his odd life in news and ink.

His subjects were “famous, infamous, or as obscure as the rest of us except for one instance of memorable distinction,” the latter including a stupid airline hijacker,  some guy who shot a ballplayer, a pederast, a con artist, or an embezzler, all thrown next to honored humanitarians, statesmen, and scientists seeking to cure AIDS or cancer.  (Unfortunately, these days such “mainstream media” routinely ignore the deaths of many worthy religious leaders.)

With unanticipated deaths, pieces must be knocked out in an hour or two. But at the Times and elsewhere, important obits are planned in advance. “You can’t write the comprehensive life story of a president or a pope or a movie star in an hour or even a day,” he explains. Indeed. Five months out of college, the Religion Guy compiled a two-page obit for Delaware’s Wilmington Morning News hours after JFK died, thanks mostly to canned AP and UPI copy and our "morgue" files.  

Most periodicals will (or should) have well-prepared sendoffs for religion’s big three -- The Rev. Billy Graham, now 97 and the prime U.S. clergyman of his era; the Dalai Lama, 81, and Pope Francis, 79. With such overarching personalities the temptation is to bigfoot the task, handing it to a veteran generalist instead of the staff religion specialist.

The bottom line: The result can emphasize the politics and downplay the religion.

But the religion-news professional is a better bet due to perspective and sources.


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Anti-Muslim hate crime targets a ... Lebanese Christian? That sad murder case in Tulsa

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At first blush, an Oklahoma murder making national headlines this week seems to be a case of anti-Muslim hate. That would mean that it's another story about "Islamophobia," as the news media like to call it.

Except that Khalid Jabara, the 37-year-old man shot dead in Tulsa, was not a Muslim. The victim, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon, was an Orthodox Christian. That simple fact should have raised all kinds of questions for journalists working on this story.

The basic details of the crime, via CNN:

Tulsa, Oklahoma (CNN) For years, the Jabara family says, their Tulsa neighbor terrorized them.
He called them names -- "dirty Arabs," "filthy Lebanese," they said.He hurled racial epithets at those who came to work on their lawns, they alleged. He ran Haifa Jabara over with his car and went to court for it.
And it all came to a head last week when the man, Stanley Vernon Majors, walked up to the front steps of the family home and shot and killed Khalid Jabara, police said.
"The frustration that we continue to see anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, xenophobic rhetoric and hate speech has unfortunately led up to a tragedy like this," it said.

To what or whom does the "it said' refer after that last quote? What person or group produced this statement?

I'm not entirely certain. My guess is that an editing error led to that awkward attribution. But the quote sets up the "anti-Muslim" angle:


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A suicide party? Moral and religious questions? Associated Press draws a blank

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Ever hear of a suicide party?

There was such an event in San Diego in July and the Associated Press was there to tell us the details. The piece came with photos of a party with a 41-year-old woman who was sometimes sitting up, other times lying down. However, she could not stand or walk nor move her arms and her speech was so slurred, most had problems understanding her.

Still, what would you do if you were invited to such an event? Would you raise any questions of a moral or religious nature? We will come back to that.

SAN DIEGO -- In early July, Betsy Davis emailed her closest friends and relatives to invite them to a two-day party, telling them: “These circumstances are unlike any party you have attended before, requiring emotional stamina, centeredness and openness.”
And just one rule: No crying in front of her.
The 41-year-old artist with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, held the gathering to say goodbye before becoming one of the first Californians to take a lethal dose of drugs under the state's new doctor-assisted suicide law for the terminally ill.
“For me and everyone who was invited, it was very challenging to consider, but there was no question that we would be there for her,” said Niels Alpert, a cinematographer from New York City. “The idea to go and spend a beautiful weekend that culminates in their suicide — that is not a normal thing, not a normal, everyday occurrence. In the background of the lovely fun, smiles and laughter that we had that weekend was the knowledge of what was coming.”
Davis worked out a detailed schedule for the gathering on the weekend of July 23-24, including the precise hour she planned to slip into a coma. ...

The article described the party, and then its end:


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Washington Post cuts 'Sacred Heart': Yes, Katie Ledecky had help reaching her golden goals

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So who is winning the race, this far into Rio 2016, to be the beaming face on the front of the post-Olympics Wheaties box?

Will it be gymnastics icon Simone Biles? How about the amazing, and inspirational, Simone Manuel? Or how about the young swimmer whose record-smashing times have led some to call her the world's most outstanding athlete -- in or out of a pool -- at this moment in time?

That, of course, would be Katie Ledecky. The problem with this 19-year-old superstar is that she is stunningly normal, in terms of her life story. You can see the Washington Post wrestling with that reality in a feature story after her gold-medal blitz that ran with this headline: "Her goals met, Katie Ledecky speeds toward the next chapter of her life."

Once again, note that this is not a simple sports story. The goal here is to talk about Ledecky as a person, to talk about her future and what makes her tick. What are her values? What will shape her goals in life, now that she is packing away her Olympics experiences and heading to her freshman year at Stanford University?

Yes, GetReligion readers, we are looking for some sign of her strong Catholic faith. Let's look at some of the crucial material near the end:

Somewhere in that hug line was U.S. women’s assistant coach Greg Meehan, who has been handed the keys to the Lamborghini. The Stanford women’s swim coach recruited Ledecky with a pitch touting the school’s storied and talent-loaded swim program, its Ivy-level academic offerings and its opportunities for even a legendary athlete to blend into campus life.


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Comments with real content: More about that bride and the man with her father's heart

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Longtime readers of this site know that the evolving GetReligionista team has been in the blogging business for a dozen years, which means that we have seen quite a few trends in social media come and go through the years. Yes, I confess that I once thought Twitter was a joke.

Early in the digital revolution, one of the elements of the new medium that excited people the most was the potential for solid, even insightful material emerging through comments from readers, comments that might even result in constructive dialogue between journalists and readers. Then along came the trolls and may online editors lost faith.

Comments have always been a part of what we do here at GetReligion, even though some of the most important comments come in the form of private emails from journalists who, for various reasons, cannot leave public posts on the site.

The problem, from Day 1, has been that the vast majority of comments on our posts consist of commentary -- often very blunt -- about religious and political issues mentioned in our posts, as opposed to commentary about the pros and cons of how mainstream journalists cover these issues. As folks here have stressed many times: This is not a religion news blog. GetReligion is a blog focusing on the good and bad in news media efforts to cover religion news.

Thus, we send about 75 percent of all of the comments we receive into the digital trash. In journalism lingo, we spike them. Frankly, we wish that more people would take the time to read our commenting policy, which began long ago with a memo from GetReligion co-founder Doug LeBlanc.

Want to read it?


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What. It. All. Means. Simone Manuel keeps trying to tell the world her whole story

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I don't know about you, but I am still fired up about that stunning and historic gold-medal win by Simone Manuel in the 100-meter freestyle.

So, yes, here is a follow-up post (click here for my quick earlier take in this week's "Crossroads" podcast piece) on the news coverage of this young woman and her amazing Olympics story. In other words, the scribes in the mainstream press are still hard at work striving to tell the world (all together now) What. This. All. Means.

Let's start with some crucial video work.

For millions and millions of folks, Rio 2016 is experienced through the "how many ads can we make you watch" entertainment package offered by NBC Sports. The stories run by major news organizations are important, but the images that flash across that big, glowing wall in the home entertainment cave is what really matters.

So please click here and watch this piece of video from an NBC interview with Manuel minutes after her win. What are the first words that she speaks, when offered the chance to say What. This. All. Means?

That would be, "All glory to God."

This is not surprising, of course, for anyone who has glanced Manuel's Twitter feed. Here she is again with the other glowing Simone of this Olympics, as in gold-everything gymnastics icon Simone Biles (one of several high-profile Catholics on the U.S. team).

Now, watch the official NBC version of that same pool-side moment (at the top of this post) that has been posted at YouTube. Spot a key difference, after the editors have had time to work on it?


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