Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Regular readers of GetReligion may recall one of my tenets for MSM coverage of religion, politics and culture: The Religious Right must lose. Or stated the other way, above all else, the Religious Right must not be allowed to win.
I cannot tell you how many times I have had readers ask me why so many religion-news stories seem to turn on the issue of homosexuality.
So Mel Gibson’s next movie is in the Mayan language, but the title (Apocalypto) is the Greek word for “a new beginning.”
I’m on the road in Kansas City. Can you imagine a national journalism conference with no WiFi? Frustrating.
One of the more endearing things about Jann Wenner is that he still writes for Rolling Stone nearly 40 years after founding it. His pieces are memorable: a lengthy Q&A with John Lennon shortly before Lennon’s murder, a gang interview with presidential candidate Bill Clinton at Doe’s Eat Place and off a one-page editorial endorsing Al Gore. Whenever Wenner contributes again to the pages of his flagship, you can be sure he’ll bring passion to it.
For the past week or so, something kept bothering me about the Newsweek cover story titled “How Women Lead.”
The mail call for Newsweek‘s splash on the Mormon Church was thick and heavy, judging by those letters published in this week’s issue. There are a total of 15, by my count. Here’s a good summary:
In a city that is already buzzing with gossip, it takes a really hot story to crank the chatter up another notch. Well, the latest Washington Post twist in the saga of Harriet Miers and God certainly did that. Here’s the bottom line in reporter Jo Becker’s fine story (which deserved much better headlines): Bush’s legal sidekick, while serving as president of the Texas Bar Association, told elite female audiences that she backed what is essentially a libertarian position on abortion.
One of the advantages of having a veteran reporter on the Godbeat is that they have long memories and they can spot key updates in ongoing stories. Here are two fine examples, in the recent work of Julia Duin at The Washington Times. Both of these stories are linked to one of the major U.S. religion trends of the past generation or two, the statistical implosion of what was once called mainline Protestantism.
