Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It seems that the Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc and young Daniel Pulliam are both traveling this long weekend and I am all alone with the hurricanes, the U.S. Supreme Court and who knows what all. So I am, in my own way, going to punt. This means I am going to keep mining my deep, deep file of major stories on which I wanted to blog last week and did not have the time.
Anyone who has read GetReligion for a while knows that, as a rule, we are fans of the work of religion-beat star Laurie Goodstein at The New York Times. Click here for a flashback to her fine work on a story that other papers we could mention have been, well, oversimplifying a bit.
The New Yorker has published another lengthy feature story — this time about an entrepreneurial “cemeterian” in California named Tyler Cassity — that’s available only in print (the Aug. 29 issue). Tad Friend, author of the 12-page article, discusses it in this online Q&A.
As always, we tend to steer clear of op-eds here at GetReligion, since we are all about news. But Colbert King at The Washington Post has written the theologically appropriate column of the day, whether he knows it or not. This is excellent and I hope lots of MSM editors and network producers read it.
The pros at the Religion Newswriters Association have posted a collection of resources linked to Hurricane Katrina and the swarm of spiritual and moral questions events such as this raise. Check it out.
At the moment, it’s hard to pick up any section of any newspaper and read any story without thinking about what is happening on the Gulf Coast. And, for me, it’s impossible to think about New Orleans without thinking about Daniel Patrick Moynihan and then the following reality, as described in the classic five-part New Orleans Times-Picayune series titled “Washing Away.” (To see the whole package from 2002, click here.)
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is turning into one of the worst domestic episodes in American history. We started with a hurricane that could possibly destroy a major city, but did anyone really believe that could happen? Well, it’s in the process of happening and while it will not be as fast as the collapse of the Twin Towers, we are just beginning to understand the ramifications of the event, from the structural issues in the city to the sociological issues in dealing with people who have essentially become refuges.
Pardon me while I veer into a bit of biography for a second. I have a news-oriented reason for doing so.
I was on the road this past weekend in New York City and had some time — while bracing for the Katrina story — to read a long takeout piece in The New York Times Magazine by Jeffrey Rosen titled “Roberts’ Supreme Futurology” (the Web version calls it “Roberts v. the Future”). The first part of the read out on the cover told you what you needed to know about the goal of the piece: “The most divisive issues likely to be argued before the Supreme Court in the coming years have nothing to do with abortion. . . .”
