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Newsweek ran the oddest article by Christopher Dickey yesterday. It reads like an opinion piece, in that way that so much of what’s in the news magazines do, but it’s not marked as an opinion piece.
Feature news stories on social trends and movements should avoid the temptation to start the article with an extreme. In what seems to be a continuation of the newest beat at The New York Times — home schooling — the story starts out with an interesting anecdote about American Muslims homeschoolers with what likely will become an unfortunate stereotype if it is not already:
Kimberly Hefling and Eric Gorski of the Associated Press wrote a story about the Catholic vote in the upcoming Democratic primary in Pennsylvania that might be described as schizophrenic.
Let me ask, once again, a question that I keep asking at this here weblog: When did it become liberal for liberals to attack conservatives for defending the rights of liberals?
Sometimes a news story should mention the absence of an issue if only to calm the passions of the readers so more important issues can become the focus of the response to the story. Over in my old stomping grounds dubbed the Quad Cities, the region’s two local newspapers have jumped on a fascinating legal story that has a man with an extensive and violent criminal record agreeing to attend church as part of a probation sentence.
I think it’s tremendously interesting when the local newspaper gives a local story a completely different angle than the non-local news source. Case in point is the difference between the Watertown Daily Times coverage of their town’s attempt to crackdown on Old Order Amish home builders for violating housing codes (think no smoke detectors) and the Associated Press.
To all GetReligion readers who are part of the Western church, let me say, “Happy Easter.” I hope you are all having a meaningful day discussing the resurrection power of Barack Obama’s recent speech on racism and its impact on healing the American soul.
It’s great when reporters take theology seriously. Some of my favorite newspaper stories are about the political and moral implications of, say, premillennial dispensation. These stories give readers a rare window into understanding the world.
Once upon a time, reporters investigated the abortion industry. In 1978, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a week’s worth of stories about unsafe conditions at local clinics. Two reporters and several representatives from the Better Government Association posed undercover. The result: two clinics closed down, a doctor’s medical license was revoked, and a governor’s task force about the clinics’ practices was appointed.
