Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
While I was on vacation, the mainstream press experienced another mini-storm of coverage linked to an old simmering story. I refer to the release, by the Italian weekly magazine Panorama, of a cover story — backed with covert videos — about the private affairs of gay Catholic priests in Rome.
One of the things that annoys me about reporting is how we spend so much time looking for and writing about dramatic news hooks that we miss the day-to-day drama of real life. I almost never see my religious life reflected in a given news story. My congregation is not driven by trends. We worship in largely the same way Lutherans have always worshiped. This does not make for exciting news coverage, as you might imagine.
I just returned from a glorious Seattle vacation, stopping in an airport bookstore to see what I missed for a week. Here’s what I gathered from the newsstands: Bristol broke it off, Chelsea tied the knot, California judge reversed Proposition 8, Time published a startling cover on Afghanistan, Shaq will go to Boston, and Brett Favre joked about retiring.
A billboard campaign orchestrated by a right-to-die group remains alive and well, but it already has gone straight to heaven.
It’s such a simple thing, I guess, but I love the way Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Ann Rodgers previews upcoming religious events. It doesn’t matter what my level of interest is going into one of her stories, I always come away something to think about.
There is no question that the following story from Canada.com and the Calgary Herald is, when push comes to shove, a crime story. Yet the lede signals that something else is going on, something that readers have to wait a long, long time to find out when reading this report.
Warning: The following post contains highly offensive language of a doctrinal nature, whether the journalists covering this event knew it or not. Proceed with care.
In the mythology of journalism, there is this story about a chart that is — or so it is said — hanging on the wall of a generic Associated Press bureau. The chart is supposed to help editors figure out the news value of disasters that take place around the world, when it comes time to decide which stories end up on page one and which ones are buried inside.
Apparently, a major religious obscenity trial in Moscow has been going on. I only know this thanks to a New York Times story, the Times being one of the few papers left these days that has the resources to do its own foreign coverage:
