Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
You know that you have moved into true Bible Belt territory when the locals start asking you — literally while the moving van is in your drive way — blunt questions that sound something like this: “Hey, do you folks know where you’re gonna go church yet?”
Long ago, before the cooling of the earth’s crust, I took my first news copy-editing class as a young journalism student at Baylor University. Anyone who has worked as a copy editor know that one of the first things you learn is how to keep bad stuff out of print.
It didn’t take long, after the Rt. Rev. Douglas Leblanc and I started GetReligion.org back in 2004, for people to start suggesting that this weblog needed to hook up with a larger website or online institution that was about religion or journalism or, hopefully, both.
Letâs face it, GetReligion readers, when I see a Washington Post headline that says something like âPaul Ryan: Midwesterner, Catholic, intellectual,â I just canât help myself. I grab a computer printout of the text, get out my yellow highlighter pen and get to work.
I know that I have mentioned, in the past, that my family was part of a predominately Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian parish in South Florida during the dark weeks right after 9/11. I remember, for example, that one young Orthodox boy was attacked in a public-school playground because he was an Arab â with his gold baptismal cross hanging around his neck.
Of all of the things that outsiders do not understand about the journalism business, one of the most important is an all-too-common misunderstanding about who writes the headlines that do so much to shape the perceptions of news consumers.
There is a serious wildfire raging near one of the monasteries on Mount Athos, which is, without challenge, the most important center of Eastern Orthodox spirituality in the world. Few would dispute that this rocky peninsula in Greece is one of the world’s most important religious centers — period.
One of the nation’s top religion writers looked at the following Washington Post story that ran the other day and his/her head almost exploded after reading the lede.
So, New York Times readers, it’s time to click your heels together and repeat the mantra, “There’s no place like Kansas,” “There’s no place like Kansas,” “There’s no place like Kansas,” over and over again.
