If you pay close attention to the details, it’s clear that your GetReligionistas are already preparing to close our doors on Feb. 2.
Look at the masthead, for example. We have inserted “2004-2024” under the name and the original first post — “What we do, why we do it” has turned into a “History” link. I’m already working on the “Why we did what we did” final piece.
Like I said the other day, we are closing — but some GetReligion features will continue in other places.
The religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling will keep writing some form of news “Memo” for Religion Unplugged, where his editor will be our own Clemente Lisi. I will continue the “Crossroads” podcast with our partners at Lutheran Public Radio and they will be available here at the GetReligion archive (see the new logo on the right sidebar), Tmatt.net and the podcast pages at Apple. We’re talking about some form of Q&A podcast or video. The GetReligion feed on X will remain open. I’m pondering a Substack newsletter — “Rational Sheep” — on religious faith and mass culture.
But the main thing that is going on is that we are working to turn this massive website into a searchable archive for people — journalists, book writers, etc. — who want tons of information, URLs and commentary about the past two decades of religion-beat news (with a heavy emphasis on First Amendment issues). It helps to remember that I am married to a reference librarian who started working on computer networks when she was a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate student in the late 1970s.
One of the things we will do, on the “Search” page, is offer some suggestions for search terms to find some classic GetReligion work. I have, for technical and legal reasons, been reading my way back through the history of of this blog and, the other day, I hit 2013.
Let’s just say that i urge readers to do a search for these terms — “Hemingway,” “Gosnell,” “trial,” 2013 — and dig into what they hit. Here is a simple Google search for that, which I can embed here.
Suffice it to say, anyone who wants to write about one of the most ghoulish trials linked to abortion and murder will need the contents of Mollie Ziegler Hemingway’s GetReligion work on that topic.
Slate put it this way: “Kermit Gosnell — The Alleged Mass-Murderer and the Bored Media.” This piece at the Gospel Coalition website was more honest: “How Mollie Hemingway Introduced the Nation to Kermit Gosnell.” A byte of that:
One didn’t have to be a prophet to see that the story was on the rise. One only had to watch Mollie Hemingway in action.
For the past few weeks, coverage of the Kermit Gosnell murder trial has been virtually absent in the mainstream media. Noticing the lack of media attention to such an intriguing story, Mollie Hemingway (from the must-read blog Get Religion) began writing about the oversight.
As the details of the trial began to spread through outside channels, the silence of mainstream journalists became less and less excusable. Mollie kept blogging about the journalistic oversight. Then, she extended her protest to Twitter, publicly contacting journalists across the nation and asking them to explain their silence.
This is one of those cases in which the tsunami of reader responses are an important part of the debates about Hemingway was doing in her posts.
One thing we heard was an old question: Why focus so much heat on abortion coverage? What does abortion have to do with religion?
I have answered that many times, offering something like this: It is impossible to look at the history of abortion-rights debates in America without discussing religious beliefs and practices. Consider this protest poster slogan from the left: “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” Can you (care of The New York Times) say “Handmaid's Tale”?
But back to a researcher digging into the GetReligion archives, during the month in which Hemingway became a digital force of nature. Here are a few key headlines:
* Breaking the silence on abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell
* WPost reporter explains her personal Gosnell blackout
* Podcast: “Kermit Gosnell Philadelphia abortion clinic provider on trial for murder
* We need answers on the Kermit Gosnell news coverage
* News media's Gosnell reputation isn't going to fix itself
In an op-ed piece for USA Today, Mollie noted that political-beat reporters frequently ask powerful politicians questions about lurid controversies in public life, especially when the core issues in the controversies are linked to subjects that a specific politician has made a cornerstone of his or her career.
Thus, this headline on that Hemingway op-ed : “Time to ask Obama about Gosnell.” Mollie noted:
Now that a jury has found Gosnell guilty on three first-degree murder charges for infants he delivered before snipping their spinal cords, one involuntary manslaughter charge in the botched abortion death of Karnamaya Mongar, and 21 counts of illegal late-term abortions, we can find out what Obama thinks about the case and the country's abortion culture.
It will be particularly interesting given President Obama's personal history. Known as one of the country's fiercest defenders of abortion rights, as an Illinois state senator Obama twice voted against bills that would have "defined any aborted fetus that showed signs of life as a 'born alive infant' entitled to legal protection." He said he viewed the bills as backdoor attacks on a woman's legal right to abortion. He's also given conflicting information about whether he supports the right to late-term abortions such as the ones Gosnell was convicted of performing.
Thus, a logical thesis:
So now that the trial is over, reporters should ask if President Obama still opposes laws that protect infants that survive abortions. After the school massacre in Newtown, President Obama suggested reforms to the country's gun laws, saying, "If there is even one step we can take to save another child . . . then surely we have an obligation to try." So let's find out the specifics of his proposed abortion reforms post-Gosnell.
Reporters didn’t ask that question, of course.
What does that have to do with religion? That would have been another good question for Obama and others on the “progressive” side of “born alive” efforts in legislatures. You know that people on the “orthodox” (using James Davison Hunter definitions in this case) side were asked hard questions.
I’ll end with this: Anyone want to offer some other logical, serious sets of search terms for that evolving search page in the GetReligion archives? Like (working on a column at the moment) these: “Mattingly,” schools, “covenants,” lawsuits. Or how about “tmatt,” “trio,” “Resurrection.”
Take a kind shot. My question is serious and sincere.