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Both The Washington Post and The Washington Times covered a Virginia state court ruling Friday regarding the constitutionality of a longstanding state law that could allow the 11 congregations who have left the Episcopal Church over the last couple of years to keep their multi-million dollar properties. The tone and perspective of the two stories are rather stark. Just look look at the headlines.
As Iraq receives less news coverage for a variety of reasons, the ongoing tragedies that are becoming part of everyday life in that ancient land receive less coverage. Nearly a year ago, we highlighted a Washington Times article on the persecution of religious minority groups in Iraq. Thursday, The New York Times provided a retrospective article on the subject of religious persecution that highlights just how tragic that persecution became:
One of the greatest aspects of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report released Monday was the state-by-state data. Unfortunately, the coverage in my morning newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, was lacking. A combination of the Associated Press and USA Today made-up the above-the-fold front-page story while the jump had a small graphic comparing the Indiana data to the entire United States.
The brutality of the flooding in the Midwest is hard to comprehend unless you have seen the devastation personally. News stories about flooding generally include the details of rivers cresting, the sandbagging of levees and flood damage assessments. Occasionally a blurb regarding a church or a community’s call for God’s assistance is mentioned, but only rarely.
The Columbus Dispatch had one of the most straightforward accounts of a porn try-out session I have ever seen in a mainstream newspaper Thursday. Substitute the subject of pornography, and you could have easily placed the story in the Wednesday afternoon farmer’s market where tomatoes and cabbage are for sale to the general public.
The news of a pregnancy boom at the Massachusetts fishing town’s Gloucester High School has made an amazing fast lap around the Internets over the last couple of days.
Who would have thought that a relatively new Washington, D.C., insider’s news organization would scoop all the news organizations in a major U.S. city that boasts two major daily newspapers? The Politico, which has quickly established its turf in a town full of media organizations, reported Wednesday morning that Muslims were “barred from picture at Obama event.”
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s speech on Father’s Day about the importance of fatherhood is drawing praise from some surprising quarters that the day-after stories struggled to pick-up on. The New York Times rightly focused on the impact the speech had on the African-American community, but this speech is having effects in other communities as well.
I was pleasantly surprised last Monday morning to see in my morning newspaper a story of significant length on the Southern Baptist’s convention, held this week across the street from where I work. Indianapolis gets all sorts of conventions, from Gen Con to the National FFA. The newspaper does a reasonable job covering them, but some fall through the cracks.
