Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The latest issue of The New Republic has E.J. Dionne’s dispatch from Rome on the election of Benedict XVI. Like most TNR dispatches, the piece becomes an argument. In this case, the point is that Catholicism shouldn’t shut itself off from the modern world.
Diane Knippers was a friend of this blog, in that I worked with her (and other conservative Episcopalians) during the Lambeth Conference of 1998 and the Episcopal Church’s General Conventions of 1994, 1997 and 2003. I was not so close to Diane as to be overwhelmed by grief as she is buried today, but I feel keen sorrow for her husband, Ed.
The past few days have been hellish for our readers who want to post comments, and we ask your forgiveness. The crew at our server is trying to resolve this problem, which affects not only comments but also our ability to post items with any certainty that they will appear.
The job of the GetReligion crew is to judge media coverage, for good or for ill. The smaller the story, the easier that is to accomplish. But then you have these massive media events and what do you do with those? Here’s my idea. (And I’m speaking for myself here, not the non-Borg.) I think we could hand out awards for best and worst coverage of big religion media events and invite readers to chirp in with their own nominations. For instance, in the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I would start with the following awards:
The noted American Catholic theologian Maureen Dowd has already served up the official talking points for the first wave of coverage of Pope Benedict XVI. This pretty much covers the terrain, which the MSM is covering with various degrees of depth and balance. Ready?
Terry wrote yesterday about “the dreaded passive-voice paraphrase quote.” Today I turn to another vexing problem in journalism: the dreaded one-sentence summary of a complex history.
Boy, when I wrote a piece for The American Spectator suggesting that the next pope not allow most priests to marry, I had no idea that we’d have a new pope so quickly, or that he would be so very likely to resist most calls to reform. The piece may be the fastest-rotting piece of punditry I have ever produced, though that didn’t stop readers from giving it to me good in Reader Mail.
At a dinner last night with some journalists and scholars (not in Rome), I wisecracked that we all needed to head down to Jesuit headquarters to watch the conclave on live video.
It’s time for a last glance at some memorable pre-conclave stories as we watch the press try to handle the hours (or perhaps days) of waiting before the white smoke starts another blitz.
