Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Reporting on sports and religion is a messy business. When these worlds collide in a news story, the finished product is often filtered through the reporter’s prism of beliefs and prejudices. The advocacy journalism common to European newspapers, but restricted to the op-ed pages of most quality American papers, tends to run riot.
How knowledgeable is your audience? What can a writer assume and what must be explained. One of the arts of journalism is the ability to gauge readers’ interests and abilities — to write not too much nor too little in setting the background of a story. When I write a story for the Church of England Newspaper, the Jerusalem Post or an American newspaper, I have an idea of what needs to be said and left unsaid for that particular audience.
I could hardly believe the news last week when I read that Wilson Ramos, the Washington Nationals catcher, had been kidnapped in his native Venezuela. It just seemed like something out of a movie rather than real life. And reading this great play-by-play of his abduction and rescue makes you realize it could be a movie.
Confession time: I live in Oklahoma City, but I don’t read a whole lot of news stories about my local city council’s meetings.
As U.S. Catholic bishops met in Baltimore this week, this was the headline from the National Catholic Reporter:
The new head of my church body instituted a new emphasis for us around the concepts of “Witness, Mercy and Life Together.” As part of this approach, my congregation just went through a Bible Class at church learning about how the church lives and works together to proclaim the Gospel and to provide for our brothers and sisters in our congregations, communities and throughout the world.
The newspaper that lands in my front yard has ventured into an important topic that has, in some parts of the country, caused controversy. The issue at hand: whether public organizations should tweak some of their policies in order to cooperate with religious groups that stress modesty.
Harold Bloom, America’s Greatest Living Literary Scholarâ¢, wrote an essay for the New York Times over the weekend titled “Will This Election Be the Mormon Breakthrough?” The title doesn’t seem terribly ominous, Bloom has famously written a book on American religion, and he’s known for having a fascination with Mormons. What could go wrong?
