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The media is starting to cover the ironies and excitement of President Bush’s visit to China for the 2008 Olympics. The New York Times has already appropriately played up the fact that Bush attempted to go to worship at a house church but was denied by the Chinese government.
One of my favorite religion reporters is Robert King from The Indianapolis Star. A certain amount of my enjoyment reading his pieces comes from the fact that he writes about my local Hoosier Heartland community, but I think I can say objectively that King generally gets religion in his work as a journalist, and I’ve heard others around the community reflect similar thinking. He also knows the Indianapolis community.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did not live the kind of life that fits easily into a 700-word wire service story.
As I wrote a few months ago, I appreciate any serious newspaper profile of the local Catholic bishop or cardinal. Not to bash my hometown press unnecessarily, but I don’t remember the Bay Area media in the 1980s or ’90s ever doing so. And this in a region where not too long ago, the San Francisco bishop could name the city’s police chief or captain of the fire department.
As you would expect, I am still following the coverage of the Radovan Karadzic case, still looking to see if anyone is going to provide on-the-record information to back up all of those charges that the world’s most infamous war criminal had, at some point, been hiding in Orthodox churches or monasteries.
A couple of years ago, Eric Gorski — then at the Denver Post — ran a a three-part series on a local preacher of the Prosperity Gospel. What I loved about the piece, which exposed the pastor’s financial success, was that it also explored prosperity teaching in detail.
I am remiss in not writing about coverage of the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the papal encyclical that upheld the Roman Catholic Church’s prohibition against artificial birth control and contraception.
To my great satisfaction, a journalist has given serious coverage to the religious angle in the ongoing story of old churches being converted to new condos. Kathy McCabe of The Boston Globe does an excellent job of wading into the religious and spiritual significance of sacred places of worship being converted into high-end condo buildings.
Attention all journalists who care about religion news coverage in the mainstream press. I have some bad news and some good news.
