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There he is again. In prime news territory in the New York Times, which offered Terry Jones another chance to speak for himself (while also, interestingly enough, stripping him of “the Rev.” in a violation of Associated Press style on clergy titles).
What makes a story newsworthy? Impact, relevance and timeliness are at the top of the list. But editors also love novelty.
Over a week ago, we discussed the relative lack of coverage of a burning of a Koran some days earlier in Florida. The overwhelming response from readers to that post was that they hadn’t even heard about the burning. It was interesting to compare the non-stop, over-the-top coverage from last fall with the more appropriate and restrained coverage in recent weeks.
Coverage of the 11-year-old girl’s repeated gang rapes in Texas continued this week as 19 boys and men have been charged. Court records suggest that the assaults happened on at least four dates between September and November.
A long, long time ago — pre-Internet, for heaven’s sake — I had a long conversation with Bill Moyers, then of CBS, about why the mainstream press has so much trouble covering religion. This was one of those occasions in which he used a striking image to describe this problem — that far too many reporters and editors are “tone deaf” to the music of religion.
It probably will not surprise you that I’m about to highlight a story about funerals. As the child of a pastor and an active member of my current congregation, I love such stories. I know that funerals are a huge deal in the life of the church. Funerals get covered in the mainstream media fairly frequently. The deceased has to be unbelievably famous in order to get that coverage, but they are covered. But the typical funeral, the typical gathering of family and friends, is less likely to receive coverage — particularly from the perspective of the survivors.
Hopefully, after more than a year of writing for GetReligion, I have won the respect of you, kind reader.
Via Rocco Palmo’s Twitter feed, I came across this Miami CBS affiliate story about the Roman Catholic archdiocese there launching a television campaign about the sacrament of penance:
Time for a quick dip into my GetReligion guilt file to look at a Religion New Service story that intrigued several readers who felt slapped by the headline it inspired at USA Today, which was, “Parents discourage daughters who would be nuns.”
