Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Sports reporters are often some of the most closely read journalists in the local newspaper. They are also often the most knowledgeable journalists about the subject they cover. To some people’s surprise, sports journalists must also have an adequate grasp on just about everything else in life, including religion.
Last week we had quite a few readers send us a story that ostensibly had nothing to do with religion. Here’s the Associated Press version:
Somehow I missed the odd reference to some guy named “Bill Graham” in The New York Times article on Obama’s desire to expand the role of religious groups in combating the nation’s social problems. Thankfully, the blog Between Two Worlds picked up the reference:
Marie Antoinette had nothing on the late Leona Helmsley. Antoinette, the Queen of France, famously said that the hungry masses should eat cake. Hemsley, the self-styled queen of hotels and real estate, in her will declined to say that people should get that much.
Please believe me when I say that I understand the frustration that many reporters experience while trying to cover the Anglican Communion wars. I also know that GetReligion is causing some frustration among some reporters with our insistence that reporters keep trying, trying, trying to find language that is accurate and (even harder) neutral at all levels of the conflict — local, regional, national and global.
Man, I missed Stephanie Simon. She’s the superhuman religion reporter who left the Los Angeles Times in April for the Wall Street Journal. These last few months of California-heavy coverage without her ace reporting have been difficult to endure. I missed her so much that I just randomly Googled her name . . . and found a fantastic story that ran last week in the Journal. I have no idea how I missed this huge Page One story with tons of graphics. (If that link does not work, try this reprint from the Denver Post.) It’s vintage Simon — she reports the heck out of her pieces, gives them a compelling angle, and writes beautifully.
A funny thing happened last week after I dashed off a quick post about that omnipresent “eternal life” item in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey produced by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell criticized modern writers for all manners of sins, not the least of which were a lack of detail and specificity. He cited a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes: “I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong …” Then he translated it in modern English: “Objective consideration of temporary phenomena compels the conclusion …”
To the surprise of few, presumed 2008 Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama announced that he plans to out-do Bush in integrating faith-based programs on the federal level. What surprised some, at least initially, was an inaccurate report from the Associated Press that said that Obama’s plan would support religious organizations’ ability to hire and fire based on faith.
