Oh no.

GetReligion has entered its teenage years, as tmatt noted this morning.

In case you need it, here's some advice on how to survive this awkward time for your favorite journalism-focused website (we are your favorite, right?).

But seriously, folks ...

Thirteen years is a long time for blog to survive. When Terry Mattingly and Douglas LeBlanc launched GetReligion in 2004, I was covering religion for The Associated Press in Dallas. "Blog" was one of Merriam-Webster's "Words of the Year" that same year, but — as I recall — I didn't become familiar with the concept until leaving AP and joining The Christian Chronicle in 2005.

I can't recall exactly how I found GetReligion or when, but I was an avid reader of the site before joining the team of contributors in March 2010. That was — gulp! — nearly seven years and 11,943 email conversation threads ago. At least that's how many threads my "GetReligion story possibilities" folder shows right now — I may have deleted one or two threads over the years.

At GetReligion's 10th anniversary in 2014, I shared "Five things they didn't tell me" about this gig. None has changed (see my original elaboration on this points here):

From the very beginning, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes and her newspaper, The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., have owned the story of the Emanuel AME Church shooting.

Just a few of the posts I've written over the last year praising Hawes, who covered the Godbeat full time before joining the Charleston paper's projects team.

To mark Friday's one-year anniversary of the attack on Emanuel AME, The Post and Courier produced a five-part narrative series written by Hawes.

This exceptional series takes readers behind the scenes of the shooting and the lives of those forever changed by it — and yes, Hawes once again nails the faith angle.

On Day 1 of the series, the chilling opening scene:

The assassin slinked past the Rev. Dan Simmons Sr. as the retired man of God lay dying in the church’s hallway. He slipped by an office where the pastor’s wife and little girl cowered under a desk. An hour earlier, the gunman, a young white supremacist with plans to start a race war, had strolled in through the heavy wooden side door just a few steps away.

Now, Polly Sheppard heard it slam shut behind him. Heavy silence descended.

Happy 13th birthday, GetReligion! My wish as we enter the teenage years

At anniversary of Emanuel AME attack, hometown newspaper provides more amazing coverage