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Looks like someone lapsed into reporter-crush-mode over a meal with Hollywood’s latest rock star director. Ryan Murphy is kind of a big deal, according to Brooks Barnes, who wrote a glowing profile for The New York Times on Eat Pray Love‘s director.
Long ago, when I was the religion-beat reporter and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News (please pause for a moment of silence), I thought that one of the most interesting stories in town was the growth of the local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church.
It’s a tough category, to be sure, but Lona O’Connor wins the prize for the worst story I’ve ever seen about female, non-Roman Catholic priests. It ran in the Palm Beach Post and it’s just absolutely embarrassing from top to bottom.
Few would disagree that the debate over same-sex marriage is more charged than usual. Charges of bad faith and bigotry abound. Honest reporting can help cooler heads prevail. Many of the arguments in this debate have been badly mangled, and that’s why I was so pleased to see this Religion News Service piece by Daniel Burke on “Why Prop 8 ruling scares religious conservatives.”
We spend a lot of time reading stories that miss an obvious religion angle or ones that don’t give enough space to explain some fundamentals. Our eyes widen at stories that do a nice job of explaining complex issues in under 1,000 words.
Well, the battle over same-sex marriage is right where everyone expected it to be at this point. As the New York Times analysis noted, it’s pretty clear that Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s opinion was written to an audience of one.
In a move surprising precisely no one who followed his handling of the case, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8. Something tells me we’ll be looking at media coverage of this story for a while. I’m reading the 138-page ruling now but it will take me a while to get through. Imagine being a reporter on deadline who needs to get a story up as quickly as possible. I may have never said this before when it comes to coverage of Proposition 8 but the Los Angeles Times actually got a lot done in a short period of time, I think. That may be because they had to keep the analysis to a minimum and just get a quick take on the facts out:
The Associated Press reported on the return to the pulpit of a Minnesota Lutheran pastor. He’d taken some time off after a gay publication crashed a support meeting for those facing unwanted same-sex attraction. The journalist did so under false pretenses and it created quite a bit of a firestorm because the pastor in question was a vocal opponent of changing church doctrine to affirm homosexuality.
