My apologies for the clickbait title.
But I had to get you here so I could congratulate a colleague: my fellow GetReligion contributor Julia Duin.
If you follow religion headlines, you've probably already heard about the Washington Post Magazine's in-depth — really in-depth — profile of televangelist Paula White and her role as pastor to President Trump.
Perhaps, though, you missed Duin's byline on the piece.
As she described it on Twitter, her magnum opus — 6,408 words in all — took four months to research and write:
I won't even pretend to be able to offer an unbiased critique of my colleague's work. But I will share a variety of tweets from the Twitterverse praising Duin's "fascinating," "fantastic," "must-read," "quite a meaty profile":
Even a Trump fan seemed to — mostly — approve:
As the story notes, Duin received rare, closeup access to White:
White seldom grants interviews, but she recently spoke to me on several occasions and allowed me to shadow her during a visit to Washington — a visit that included meetings with fellow evangelists and White House staffers, a prayer gathering and a Journey concert. (Her husband, Jonathan Cain, is the band’s keyboardist. Since her 2014 marriage, she has segued into calling herself Paula White-Cain on social media but hangs on to Paula White as her brand for professional reasons.) We also met two months later in Nashville, where she spoke to journalists at a Religion News Association conference.
I feel like I need to take partial credit for the success of the story. During the RNA event in Nashville, I loaned Duin my Mac laptop power cord for her interview with White. (It's the little things, right?)
Seriously, this is a remarkable piece of journalism.
Go ahead and read it all. If you have questions about the story, feel free to leave a comment. Maybe — just maybe — we can persuade Duin to respond, either here or in a followup post.