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Sorry to keep promoting our own work so much this week, but, hey, we are all on the move from place to place and I think that the topic addressed in my latest column for our friends in the diversity and ethics department at Poynter.org will be of interest to GetReligion readers.
Theme stories frustrate me. The stories that are written annually are particularly annoying. Like around the start of school, or Christmas time. Typically reporters avoid them, and I don’t think they’re very popular with readers. But I guess they are necessary and some people enjoy them. If it’s Christmas time, you simply have to do something, right?
The Religion Newswriters Association has released its annual poll to determine the top 10 religion-news events and trends of the year. It is, in my opinion, a very ordinary year with an all-too-familiar blend of politics, Episcopal sex, Middle East warfare, one tragedy and one (or often two) events involving the pope.
There is so much that could be said about mainstream media coverage of Christmas this year. Religion reporter Frank Lockwood — who is moving to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette — had a post on his blog about a trend he’s witnessed. He looks at a few examples of mainstream media ridiculing Christianity during the Christmas season.
First things first, now that some of us have reached the festive 12-day season we’ve all been waiting for — Merry Christmas! This raises another question for me, a media question covered in a nice way the other day by a feature in the Los Angeles Times.
Peter Kann, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and chairman of Dow Jones, had a wonderful piece in The Wall Street Journal that I encourage you to read. Noting that CNN’s pre-election programming had names like “Broken Borders,” “Broken Government,” “Broken Politics,” he says the media, too, are in need of some mending.
Greetings from the mountains of North Carolina, where the wonderful folks at the Dotcom Café have left their wireless working so that obsessed people can sit in the parking lot and do their email.
I’m back in the great Hoosier state for the weekend, celebrating Christmas. I was given the opportunity to play in my high school’s alumni basketball game this evening and generally have had an opportunity to kick back and enjoy time with the family.
Let’s flash back for a moment to the eruption of Anglican warfare in Northern Virginia that drew so much press coverage last weekend.
