Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Regular readers of this blog may recall previous references to the work of Jay Rosen, the New York University journalism professor who is the author of that must-read essay called “Journalism Is Itself a Religion.” Click here to check that out.
Like many in the newspaper business, I keep up with journalism news by reading Jim Romensko’s blog on the very helpful Poynter site. Anyone who thinks that the media world leans left will have their suspicions confirmed by reading Romenesko, but I find there’s no better site with interesting news about the media business. Something he posted yesterday caught my eye:
POTUS wannabe but for now just Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., spoke at a religious institution this past weekend. This sent political reporters at the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post into a tizzy writing about how weird it was to see two man that apparently once despised each other sit there in their funny robes acting friendly with one another. An amazing political development!
I know it’s not the biggest deal in the world, but today’s correction in the Washington Post caught my eye:
A GetReligion reader named Matt, commenting on the letter from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush, raised an insightful point that I wish I had known and mentioned. But this is the Internet and there is plenty of room for follow-up:
It was 10 years ago — next week, in fact — that I wrote a column for the Scripps Howard News Service that began like this:
The 18-page letter from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush is gaining a lot of attention for its religious imagery and its call for Bush to look closely at his own religious convictions. It reads, says the Wall Street Journal editorial board, like “the Unabomber’s manifesto.” Ouch.
You remember how New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael famously asked how Richard Nixon could have won the presidency considering how everyone she knew voted against him? Well, I feel like Pauline Kael a lot since I live in Washington, D.C. If there is a less diverse political environment out there, I’m not aware of it. I was shocked that Bush won in 2004 because we went 90 percent for Kerry. I don’t actually know anyone who voted for Bush and lives in D.C.
Last Sunday’s 8,000-plus-word takeout in The Washington Post Magazine on military chaplains is a tremendous example of why long-form journalism is so helpful in dealing with complex religious issues. The magazine’s editors gave Kristin Henderson, the wife of a Navy chaplain and author of While They’re at War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront, the space needed to tell the story of why chaplains are a necessary part of the U.S. military operations and some of the immense challenges they face:
