A big, vague ghost in the Ray Lewis reporting

If you are a pro-football fan, or a human being who is alive and breathing in greater Baltimore, then you are probably aware that today’s playoff game between the Ravens and the “Indianapolis Colts” is the final home game for Ray Lewis, perhaps the greatest inside linebacker to ever put on pads (and I say that as an old-school fan of Mike Singletary).


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Pod people: Looking back at 2012, one more time

I don’t know about you folks, but to me is seems like the 2012 news cycle has been ending for the past three or four weeks. Everyone was already publishing their top stories of the year lists and then the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre turned everything upside down.


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Dan Gilgoff departs CNN, with a message

It’s always hard to see people leave the Godbeat, even while you wish them well. Dan Gilgoff has been a religion news writer for as long as I’ve been here at GetReligion and his most recent work — at CNN’s Belief Blog — has probably been my favorite.


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Symbolic defeat for a Christian business in Maryland

After spending more than a week on the road, I returned home — as always — to find a large stack of ink-stained dead tree pulp that needed to be sorted a read. I refer, of course, to all the back issues of the newspaper that lands in my front yard.


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Excellent video journalism, or, seeing crucifixes on walls

A journalist I greatly admire shared this video, mentioning it was from the New York Times. It immediately struck me as a riveting piece of journalism with a not-too-small religion angle.


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The Magic Circle and the Soho masses

The line between criticism and carping is not always clear. A story may appear to be well written, well sourced, balanced and complete to a casual reader. The same story, however, may appear naive, incomplete or wrongheaded to someone who has knowledge or opinions on the issues.


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The Washington Post finds ghost in Russian adoption ban

Now that my husband and I hope to bring more children into our family through adoption, we’ve entered into a complex and incredibly bureaucratic and confusing world. We’ve made new friends, too, who have helped us through the process. Some of them have adopted internationally. In fact, most of the other adoptive families we’ve met have adopted internationally.


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Got news? That other 2012 Supreme Court case

Does anyone out there in GetReligion reader land remember that narrow U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for arguments to continue about the Obama administration’s health-care law? On one level, that decision was about money and taxes, but buried down in one of the opinions written on the winning side was a highly significant, yet mostly overlooked, quote linked to the religious-liberty battles that dominated the religion-news beat in 2012.


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