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One of my family members devours biographies, a genre not known for tantalizing your average middle-aged woman. When I asked her why she loves them, she insists that the stories are better than fiction, that because they are true, they are much more interesting. A recent news story out of California fits that description pretty well.
How long have I been away from my desk, out on the nation’s highways visiting various encampments of family members?
My dad used to tell me a story about a man getting off of a train and asking the station manager for information about the town he’d just arrived in.
I have mixed emotions about focusing the critical spotlight on this New York Times story about the plight of Christians in the Sudan. I am pleased that a story that speaks to the state sponsored persecution of Christians made it into the paper’s pages, yet I would have wished they had fact checked their story.
Back at a high point of the Anglican wars, your GetReligionistas could have written a post a week noting how mainstream journalists were chopping multiple decades off the timeline of the conflicts in the Episcopal Church.
The beginning of a new year is as good a time as any to reflect on whether there are things we’d like to revise our change. As I’m typing this, commenter John M. (on another thread about the disappointing levels of Biblical literacy among media types and others) suggests, for instance:
Journalism without nuance relies on stereotypes and cardboard-cutout characters. Journalism with nuance entertains complex positions, shades of gray and ironic juxtapositions.
Wednesday’s broom fight between Greek and Armenian clergy at the Church of the Nativity has come as a god-send to the editors manning the desks of news rooms this Christmas. With the year-in-review pieces done and the boss away until Tuesday, the junior editors ruling the roost have been handed a fun item with which to play.
