A Los Angeles Times story this week on a Muslim youth camp starts out as one of those lazy summer features that most reporters could write in their sleep:
Dots in Muslim camp feature don't connect
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Define 'Mormon prayer;' give three examples
I realize that this is strange, but I continue to read press reports (wink, wink) containing evidence that Mitt Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that this could cause him trouble with evangelical Protestant Christians. Am I alone in reading about this?
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Is Obama a self-professed evangelical?
Normally I criticize the media for its single-minded obsession and focus on politics. A journalist friend on the political beat recently suggested that most media has become a trade press for the political class and I think there’s a lot of truth in that. But even I get very excited about political conventions. Since I was a child — and yes, I was a weird child — I absolutely loved listening to political speeches at conventions. I can still quote certain lines from speeches Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson delivered at conventions in the 1980s.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Helen Parmley, the Dallas diva of the divine
Anyone who knows anything about the history of religion-news coverage in the journalism marketplace knows that there used to be an age in which America’s major newspapers — the top 10 to 20 markets, mainly — all had “religion editors” whose primary duty was to produce materials for the weekly “religion pages” that were buried somewhere back inside the Saturday newspapers. These reporters occasionally wrote stories for the front page, perhaps when the city’s most powerful high-steeple church got a new pastor or fired an old one, but that was not the norm.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Guilt, grief and God: a gay son's suicide
About that high-profile claim that a political and cultural progressivism “literally bleeds through the fabric” of The New York Times:Â Anybody catch the story on Tyler Clementi’s parents leaving their evil, gay-bashing evangelical church?
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Questions about American Taliban and group prayer
Earlier this week, the Associated Press had a nice long story on a Taliban fighter’s religious liberty. “American Taliban fighter Lindh: Prison ban on daily group prayer violates religious freedom” begins by telling us that a federal prison rule barring John Walker Lindh from group prayer is “absurd” and is “causing him to sin against his religion by prohibiting such gatherings in the name of security.”
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Are there Muslim evangelists?
How far should the press go to acculturate their overseas news stories — to make them palatable to an American audience while also being true to the underlying facts? NPR Morning Edition reporter Lauren Frayer had a great story last week that “gets religion”, but also brought this issue to mind.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Women who support Akin's rape claims? Not really
One of the best strategies journalists can use when dealing with religious people — especially those with intense and even unusual, beliefs — is to give these folks some time and space in which to explain what they do believe (and often what they do NOT believe). I have been waiting for a major news publication to attempt this approach with supporters of Todd Akin’s stunningly strange beliefs on conception and rape, if such people can be found and accurately quoted.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
How should the Godbeat be funded?
It’s no secret that times are tough for journalism. We keep seeing newspapers laying off reporters, combining beats and generally making work harder for the limited number of employees who remain. The Godbeat in particular has had a rough go of things, with the loss of some of its very best professionals. So I’m pretty open to innovative methods of keeping the beat going.
Please respect our Commenting Policy