Newspaper sports columnists around the world jumped on an “incident” between two Texas schools involving a 100-0 blowout as a juicy opportunity to explore the issues surrounding youth athletic competition (see here, here, here, here and here). Aside from this well-reported ESPN.com piece by Jeff Miller on the history of high school blowouts, Barry Horn of The Dallas Morning News has provided much of the reporting muscle in this story that combines youth athletics, competitive values and Christian educational institutions.
New Monasticism without pity
Darrah Johnson has written a masterpiece of a story for The Washington Post Magazine about young Catholics living in an intentional community known as Simple House (or, more fully, A Simple House of Sts. Francis and Alphonsus).
The undivisive issue of abortion
I’ve been under the weather for a few days but didn’t want to overlook some news coverage from the end of last week.
Symbolic win for gay rites! News?
After nearly three decades on the Godbeat, and 15 years in the classroom, I am still fascinated with basic questions about the process of reporting and writing the news. But, before you report and write a story, you have to decide if a particular event, trend or statement is or is not news.
Obama: Get (civil) religion
Here’s a term that you should get used to hearing once again, during the era of President Barack Obama — “civil religion.”
How not to substantiate a quote
CNN is featuring a story headlined “Haggard faces new sex allegations.” While Haggard’s former church disclosed a pattern of immoral behavior at the time it let Haggard go, the specifics are somewhat new.
What was he thinking?
What was Pope Benedict’s intent when he revoked the excommunications of four bishops (one of whom is a Holocaust-denier) from a movement that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church twenty years ago?
Healing: The church-state line? (updated)
Click. Click. Connect. Cancel?
As regular readers know, your GetReligionistas have had our issues with the postmodern Newsweek magazine ever since we opened this website.
