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Tucked away in The Washington Post‘s metro section Saturday was a quiet story about a pastor and his mission that “lasted 50 years.” In reading this story, imagine what the article would look like if it were about a successful businessman who grew a local Washington, D.C.-area company from 27 employees “to more than 3,300.” Would key terms go undefined and controversial issues be left unexplored?
Considering its ubiquity, death has to be one of the most under-reported aspects of the religion beat. Dying, death and funerals are major topics in the life of every pastor — but usually they only get covered when they happen to someone famous.
As any regular GetReligion.org reader would know, we go out of our way to note the exceptionally good work that many religion reporters do on this very complex and difficult beat. A quick glance in the archives will also tell you that, more often than not, we are fans of the work of Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
At all costs avoid the Associated Press’s coverage of the lawsuit against Victoria Osteen. The article the AP has distributed is full of examples of poor journalistic practices that damage the reputation of the profession.
Another Lambeth Conference has come and gone and, as you may have noticed, there wasn’t much happening in the way of news. That is, of course, the real news. The archbishop of Canterbury and his staff managed to hold a global meeting of most of the Anglican bishops without anything really bad happening in front of the mainstream press.
One of my favorite religion reporters is Robert King from The Indianapolis Star. A certain amount of my enjoyment reading his pieces comes from the fact that he writes about my local Hoosier Heartland community, but I think I can say objectively that King generally gets religion in his work as a journalist, and I’ve heard others around the community reflect similar thinking. He also knows the Indianapolis community.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did not live the kind of life that fits easily into a 700-word wire service story.
To my great satisfaction, a journalist has given serious coverage to the religious angle in the ongoing story of old churches being converted to new condos. Kathy McCabe of The Boston Globe does an excellent job of wading into the religious and spiritual significance of sacred places of worship being converted into high-end condo buildings.
I don’t know if there is a publication in Russia that is similar to The Onion, but GetReligion reader Lars Doucet sent me a story the other day that had me going, thinking that it was some kind of cruel satire or parody. But this story wasn’t from a Russian publication, it was from The Telegraph.
