Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
One of the hardest things that journalists have to do, from time to time, is cover controversial stories when they can only get voices on one side of the fight to talk on the record. Normally, one camp is seeking coverage and the other is trying to avoid it.
Any longtime reader of GetReligion knows that the gang here likes Q&A interviews, especially when they allow newsmakers to dig deeper into complex topics and tell their own stories in their own words. I think this journalistic tool is especially valuable on the religion beat — which is so rich in history, symbolism and doctrine.
I’ll admit right up front that my eyebrows arched way up when I saw that my local newspaper — that would be the Baltimore Sun — had published an A1 news feature on efforts by the Southern Baptist Convention to plant a circle of new churches in and around this unique urban environment that some call Charm City.
In the summer of 2006, Father Martyn Minns of Truro Episcopal Church outside Washington, D.C., became Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation for Anglicans in North America, a missionary effort of the gigantic Anglican Church of Nigeria. That would be three years ago.
It may be time for that old, old Episcopal joke, again. This is the version that I heard in the mid-1990s.
So I was wandering around the internet, as one does, and came across a couple of stories involving curious goings on at a couple of grave sites. Some of the stories were really poorly written.
Associated Press music writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody praised the “poignant and serene” memorial service for Michael Jackson:
