Terry Mattingly

Shirley MacLaine, born again -- again

Believe it or not, I have had a warm spot in my religion-writer heart for actress Shirley MacLaine ever since she stood up in front of the American Society of Newspaper Editors long ago and delivered a sermon on why there is more to religion news than warfare and denominational politics. Three cheers for candid people with good soundbites.


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Blame the apples? Cover the oranges

The official Vatican document at the heart of the “gay-priest ban” story is now available online and it turns out that the leaked version was accurate, only it was missing the footnotes from the authors. We may hear more about that in the next day or so.


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One heart. One amazing story.

Within the larger story of Hurricane Katrina there was an amazing story about journalism — the stunning performance of the journalists at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Not only did this newspaper continue to cover the disaster, they did so with few if any resources since their own organization was caught up in the storm. Shut down, the newspaper evolved into a blog that continued — 24/7, as best it could — to break stories.


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New round of GetReligion ch-ch-ch-changes

We are creeping up on an interesting landmark here at GetReligion — Feb. 1 is the second anniversary of the birth of this blog. On one level this is not all that surprising, seeing as how we have already hit 1200-plus posts and more than 8,000 comments (and that’s just counting Michael, Stephen A. and Avram).


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