Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Yes, it’s easy to criticize the work of an editorial intern, even one who is a Fulbright scholar and has a master’s degree. Still, where was a decent copy editor at The Nation when Drew Haxby wrote about the sexuality debate within Anglicanism? For that matter, why should any copy editor have to deal with so much stilted writing?
Inspired by David Gibson on his Pontifications blog, I will float these predictions for the Godbeat in 2009. I lack the courage to commit myself to any one answer, or the insight to write every item with serious intent.
Charles Blow fills a niche so precise that The New York Times is one of the few daily papers that could maintain it in these lean times. He is the Times‘ “visual Op-Ed columnist,” which means that Blow, drawing on his long experience as graphics editor and then graphics director for the Times, supplements his concise remarks with graphics.
One of the pleasures of magazines is in an editor’s creative matching of writer and subject. When the matchmaking defies obvious choices, the results can be especially satisfying, as in Patricia Marx’s profile of two rabbis who inspect food factories in China for kosher compliance (abstract here; full article requires registration).
For one angle in the brouhaha surrounding Rick Warren’s slated Inauguration prayer, blogs did most of the heavy lifting. Thanks to Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, Christina Hoag of The Associated Press and Alex Koppelman of Salon for mentioning, in varying levels of detail, that Warren and rock singer Melissa Etheridge met each other at an event sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
GetReligion has offered few sympathetic words for Sally Quinn or for On Faith, the religion blog that she founded with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. As many readers will remember, Quinn identified herself as an atheist until Meacham challenged her assertion.
Singer Alexandra Burke recently won top honors on Britain’s X Factor TV talent competition, and she drove Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” to the top of the pop charts. Ruth Gledhill of The Times asked her colleague Alan Franks to reflect on Cohen’s spiritual life.
Ah, December — the month of office parties, hearing “Jingle Bell Rock” in airports and reading incessant Top 10 lists. Time is ahead of the pack this year, rolling out 50 lists, and David Van Biema does the honors on the year’s top religion stories.
Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. once mentioned how difficult he found it to discuss his Catholic faith in the social circles in which he moved. I had trouble imagining Buckley, who was so clear about his beliefs in God and Man at Yale and in the fortnightly National Review, having difficulty ever expressing his convictions, regardless of his dinner companions.
