Food

Baltimore Sun editors: All news is local and when covering Middle East think 'Orthodox'

There is this old-school saying in journalism that I have, on occasion, been known to quote to the editors of The Baltimore Sun, the newspaper that currently lands in my front yard: "All news is local."

In other words, when major news is happening somewhere in the world, it is perfectly normal for journalists to seek out ways in which this news is affecting people in the community and region covered by their newsroom. If a tsunami hits Southeast Asia, journalists in Baltimore need to find out if anyone from their city was killed or if anyone local is gearing up to take part in relief efforts for the survivors.

All news is local. Thus, I was not surprised when the Sun team produced a story focusing on local relief agencies that are active in the regions being affected by the brutal rise of the Islamic State.

Alas, I was also not surprised when the Sun newsroom -- as it has done in the past -- missed a major local angle in the story, and a very intense, emotional angle at that. Hold that thought.

The story starts off with the giant relief agency that simply must be covered:


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The Daily Mail talks to Memories Pizza folks, but fails to nail down one crucial angle

After all the ink that was spilled on the Memories Pizza story -- including when the famous and/or infamous GoFundMe campaign hit pay dirt -- I was curious to know how much attention the mainstream press would continue to pay to this angle in the Indiana culture wars. How about you?

Surf around in this Google News search and you discover that, after the death threats died down, the press lost interest. But I was still curious and, in this social media age, I kept following the rumors. Did you know that some on the cultural left actually argued that the entire media firestorm was intentional and part of a clever plot by the Memories Pizza family to become martyrs and, thus, cash in?

Anyway, I was happy when a few friends on social media -- think Rod "friend of this blog" Dreher, and others -- pointed me toward an actual news report on this "What happened next?" topic. Believe it or not, it was The Daily Mail in England that convinced owner owner Kevin O’Connor and his media-battered daughter Crystal to come out of hiding and talk. This on-the scene report ran back on April 7, so I'm rather surprised more people haven't chased the story -- especially the angle of what these small-town folks plan to do with the money. Here's the top:

The pizza parlor owners who received death threats and were subjected to an online hate campaign will reopen for business tomorrow with the backing of $842,000 from well wishers and a defiant message that they stand by their opposition to gay weddings. They were going to open today but were advised to hold off for security reasons.
In an exclusive first interview inside Memories Pizza restaurant since it closed down last week, owner Kevin O’Connor and daughter Crystal emerged from hiding and told Daily Mail Online they had been heartened by the support of 29,000 people who donated and many more who wrote to them.


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Un-hampered reporting: Al-Jazeera runs sensitive feature on laundry ministries

"Washing your sins away" is a common phrase, but a church coalition has taken that a step further -- by doing laundry for the poor. The project, Laundry Love, is told in a sensitive, multisourced story in, of all places, Al-Jazeera.

The story is rich in quotes and atmosphere, allowing many of the principals tell their own story. It even pulls the curtain back from an area we thought we knew:

HARBOR CITY, Calif. — From the Pacific Coast Highway exit off the freeway in Harbor City, it is impossible to miss the towering exhaust stacks of the Phillips 66 petroleum refinery and the mammoth cranes of the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. This is working-class L.A., 21 miles away and a world apart from the velvet-roped wonder of Tinseltown.
Across PCH from a payday loan shop and next door to a trailer park, King’s Laundry seems an unlikely vessel for hope in difficult times. But on a Thursday night in December, as a cheerful crowd of more than 100 men, women and children gathered in a parking lot to enjoy hot dogs, hearty soup and Christmas tunes played live by a church band, hope was exactly the thing on offer — in the form of free loads of laundry, courtesy of the volunteers who donate money, labor and laundry soap at Harbor City’s twice-monthly Laundry Love event.

Al-Jazeera neatly explains the genesis of Laundry Love: an appeal from a homeless man for clean clothes. “If I had clean clothes I think people would treat me like a human being," he said. It says the scheme works by partnering local churches with local Laundromats for the periodic wash-ups.


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CBS loves NFL veteran's potato farm; his Christian beliefs, not so much

Can a ghost haunt a football field or a potato farm? Yes, if spiritual motives make you leave one for the other -- and a news report skims over those motives.

CBS News did something like that in one of its On the Road segments. Steve Hartman found Jason Brown cheerfully bending his back over sweet potatoes instead of flattening opponents for the St. Louis Rams.

Hartman was curious about a number of things. How Brown could leave a $37 million NFL contract for 1,000 acres in North Carolina. Why he worked hard for his crop, then gave it away to food pantries. How he even learned to farm.

What the report didn't ask was why Brown changed his lifestyle so radically. It drops a few hints, like "FirstFruits Farm," the name of Brown's literal digs. Another hint:

"When you see them pop up out of the ground, man, it's the most beautiful thing you could ever see," said Brown. He said he has never felt more successful.
"Not in man's standards," said Brown. "But in God's eyes."

But those hints slip in and out of the report, like ghosts floating through the walls.

CBS does link to Brown's FirstFruits Farm, which explains it all in telling detail. Like this section:


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No pepperoni, plenty of ghosts: Generic Christians open a pizza cafe as a vague 'experiment of faith'

It's not as if NPR totally ignores the religion angle in a recent feature on a Cincinnati-area pizza cafe that "has a big heart."

In fact, that angle appears way up high in the 1,200-word piece:

Here's what might have sounded like a pretty shaky business plan for a neighborhood pizza cafe: "We'll only be open one day a week. Won't do any advertising. No prices on the menus. We'll serve mostly what we grow in the garden – and no pepperoni. And we'll look on this work as an 'experiment of faith.'"

That's what Erin and Robert Lockridge said two years ago, when they decided to open a pizza place called Moriah Pie in Norwood, a small town part of greater Cincinnati.

The better days in Norwood, an old neighborhood of two-story houses with porches, came to a close in 1989 when the Chevrolet plant shut down. But an empty, dusty café was waiting on a street corner, and Lockridges decided to start making pizzas there.

These two shared an interest in urban farming and had been working together in Norwood. Robert was what he calls a "parish farmer" sponsored by a church. On their honeymoon, driving from Novia Scotia to Maine, they talked about what might come next.

"We stopped at ... Eastport and we camped that night, and the next morning went to a very local diner," recalls Erin. It was a busy place. And in that Maine diner, the newly married Ohio couple could see their path ahead.

"We watched all the locals come in and get their breakfast and we watched the way that the waitress behind the counter tended to all these people," Erin says, "And it was really beautiful to watch her 'cause she was very aware of everybody there. She was almost like a pastor to them."

Just in those first six paragraphs, NPR makes reference to an "experiment of faith," to Robert Lockridge's work as a "parish farmer" and to a waitress who "was almost like a pastor." 

But as the reader who provided the tip on this story pointed out, "This one's kind of like the generic Christian laundry stories, only with pepperoni."


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