Monday Mix

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Plug-In with good news: MRI shows no new brain tumor growth for AP's Rachel Zoll

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Like so many of her devoted readers, I miss the stellar journalism of Rachel Zoll, longtime national religion writer for The Associated Press.

But I have positive news to report about Zoll, who was diagnosed with brain cancer more than two years ago.

An MRI last week “showed no evidence of new tumor growth once again,” said Cheryl Zoll, Rachel’s sister.

Rachel has glioblastoma, or GBM, the aggressive and deadly cancer that claimed the life of Sen. John McCain in 2018.

The Religion News Association honored Rachel with a Special Recognition Award at its 2018 annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio. That same year, AP recognized her as one of the winners of the Oliver S. Gramling Awards, the global news service’s highest internal honor.

The reporter’s doctor indicated that in 90 percent of cases, “patients would be showing progressive disease by now,” her sister said.

“While we could, of course, see new growth at any time, Rachel has officially graduated into the class of people who are outliers with respect to survival,” said Cheryl, with whom Rachel is staying in Amherst, Massachusetts. “We'll take all the time we can get!”

Like many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rachel has been confined to walking around the neighborhood the last few months. But she has enjoyed receiving calls and notes from friends such as Richard Ostling, with whom Rachel worked on AP’s national religion team for years.


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Plug-In: Investigation into Amish, Mennonite sexual abuse honored as Pulitzer finalist

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It’s a heavenly time for the Godbeat.

For the second year in a row, journalism’s most prestigious awards have recognized the transcendent work of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion editor Peter Smith.

Smith and two colleagues — Stephanie Strasburg and Shelly Bradbury — were honored this week as Pulitzer Prize finalists for “an unprecedented investigation of child sexual abuse and cover-ups in the insular Amish and Mennonite communities.”

Just last year, Smith was a key part of the Post-Gazette team that received a Pulitzer for its “immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.”

I asked Smith, who is president of the Religion News Association, for his takeaway on what the latest Pulitzer nod means for the Godbeat.

Here’s what he told me:

Religion journalism is vital, just as local journalism is vital, and both are central here. Our newspaper recognized the importance of this story and committed to investing our time and resources into understanding the problem in its unique cultural context, then reporting and telling the story through word and image.

I think that having a background in covering the Plain churches helped me as I got to know and understand the sources in our stories. More than one reader has expressed appreciation that we maintained a respect for the Plain culture even while addressing how aspects of the culture itself can be factors in the abuse. (For example, the Amish and Mennonites are widely admired for their magnanimous forgiveness, but that same virtue has been used to pressure a victim into reconciling with a predator, and to spare the latter from the legal consequences of criminal acts.)

There can also be a multiplier effect when a news organization commits to religion journalism. A religion reporter can team up with other journalists on other beats, and they can build on each other’s expertise.


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Plug-In: This Woodward-and-Bernstein fan's way to strengthen ministries? Investigate them!

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Warren Cole Smith wants to strengthen Christian ministries.

A major way he intends to do that: through investigative journalism.

Smith, 61, has served since October as president of the independent donor advocate MinistryWatch.com.

“Our overarching goal is to create transparency and accountability in the Christian ministry world,” the 1980 University of Georgia journalism graduate told me.

Rusty Leonard, who founded the nonprofit with his wife, Carol, in 1998, serves as board chairman. Leonard reached out to Smith after a donor provided funding for the new position.

Smith’s past experience includes serving as vice president and associate publisher of World, a leading evangelical magazine, and owning a chain of Christian newspapers. He is working on a book titled “Faith-Based Fraud,” which MinistryWatch hopes to publish in August.

His interest in reporting stretches back nearly five decades to the 1970s Watergate scandal uncovered by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

“When we’re doing investigative journalism, there are two audiences that I care most about,” Smith said. “What do donors need to know to make them more effective stewards? And how can we serve the victims?

“There’s an old saying that I use a lot in this kind of work: Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims,” he added. “So we want to be an advocate for the victims, which is why we will not only cover financial abuse, but we will also cover sexual abuse as well.”

See examples of Smith’s recent work here, here and here.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. DNA points to former suspect in 1985 church murders: Here’s a real whodunit with a major break in the 35-year-old case, thanks to digging by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.


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Plug-In: Those seeking lessons on locked houses of worship can study 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic

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I thought I knew a little about my family’s history.

I’ve written about my grandfather Lloyd Lee Ross, whose World War II service earned him a Bronze Star Medal and a Purple Heart. Papa died in 2011 at age 93.

I’ve visited the rural West Tennessee cemetery where generations of my relatives — going all the way back to my great-great-great-great-grandfather Daniel Ross (1791-1842) — are buried.

But not until the COVID-19 crisis hit did I learn about the global influenza pandemic of 1918 — known colloquially as the Spanish flu — and my family’s connection to it.

I knew that Papa lost his father when he was a baby. It turns out that my great-grandfather William Charles Ross (1883-1918) died on Nov. 15, 1918, at age 35 from the flu pandemic. Papa, the youngest of William Charles’ five children, was nine days shy of eight months old.

I appreciate my Uncle Chuck educating me on these details from our family’s past.

Given my interest in religion, I am grateful, too, for the journalists digging through newspaper archives to report on how houses of worship responded to the 1918 pandemic, which killed nearly 700,000 in the U.S. and 50 million globally.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Peter Smith wrote a fascinating piece on the subject, as did the Birmingham News’ Greg Garrison. For Religion News Service, Megan Botel and Isaiah Murtaugh related a Los Angeles church’s “tale of two pandemics, 100 years apart.”

At The Gospel Coalition, Joe Carter (a former member of the GetReligion team) offered “9 things you should know about the 1918 influenza pandemic.” And Word & Way editor Brian Kaylor interviewed a historian who says the 1918 pandemic shows churches can survive shutdowns.


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#WeRemember: Thoughts on the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing

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At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, I had just stepped off The Oklahoman’s eighth-floor newsroom elevator when we heard the boom and saw the smoke in the distance.

In all, 168 people died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City — the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Twenty-five years ago, my Oklahoman colleagues and I found ourselves covering the biggest story of our lives, even as we joined our grieving community in shedding tears over an unfathomable tragedy.

I was blessed to tell many stories of victims and survivors.

No single profile stuck with me, though, like the one about a blue-eyed, light-brown-haired baby named Danielle, who was killed in the second-floor America’s Kids Day Care. A quarter-century later, I caught up with Deniece Bell-Pitner, Danielle’s mother, whom I first interviewed in the bombing’s immediate aftermath.

In my story, published on the front page of The Oklahoman last Sunday, Bell-Pitner described how she progressed from anger at God to relying on him.

“I realized, ‘He’s the only way I’m going to get through this,’” she told me.

Another bombing-related angle: I wrote a retrospective piece for The Associated Press on an April 23, 1995, prayer service that began the healing process for Oklahoma and millions of TV viewers around the world.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. No hugs or handshakes: Pandemic complicates storm relief: You may — or may not — have heard that 100-plus tornadoes struck the South over two days this week, killing more than 30 people.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, for obvious reasons, eclipsed some ordinarily major news.


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This journalist did her job: Now she hopes that it didn't expose her to COVID-19

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Silvia Foster-Frau did her job.

The 27-year-old San Antonio Express-News reporter hopes her dedication to her profession didn’t expose her to COVID-19.

For more than two years, Foster-Frau has produced sensitive, nuanced coverage of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas — site of a Nov. 5, 2017, mass shooting in which 26 people died and 20 were wounded.

Her journalistic prowess has earned her honors such as Texas AP Star Reporter of the Year in the biggest newspaper category and the national Cornell Award for religion reporting excellence at mid-sized newspapers.

On Sunday, Foster-Frau returned to the rural area southeast of San Antonio to report on the Baptist church continuing to meet, “despite the potential danger posed by the novel coronavirus” — as she put it in her story.

Her news article was excellent. No surprise there. Equally impressive were the compelling images captured by Express-News photographer Josie Norris.

But given the concerns over the possible spread of COVID-19, I wondered about the decision to send journalists into an assembly with 40 worshipers, none of them wearing masks, according to the newspaper’s story.

Foster-Frau was kind enough to talk with me about her experience. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bobby Ross Jr.: You developed some really good relationships with people involved in the massacre and have excelled at covering that. Can you tell me a little about that?


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Coronavirus crisis reveals gap between news media pros and and many people of faith

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A while back, I found myself asking a woman I’ve known all my life, “Do you really believe the news media is ‘the enemy of the people?’”

“Yes, I do,” she replied.

I shook my head in amazement.

“You realize,” I said to my sweet, loving mother, “that you’re talking about your son and your daughter-in-law and your grandson, who is a journalism major.”

“No, I don’t mean you,” she insisted.

I’ve spent 30 years in the news profession — working both for secular and religious publications — and believe in the vital role of a free press in a democratic society.

Yet many of the people I love most in the world have lost all respect for journalism. That’s evidenced by the snarky Facebook memes they post, making comments like, “Something our major news media will never tell you.” (Forget that the information supplied often comes from a news source.)

If I’m being fair, I understand how my friends and relatives — many of them Bible-believing Christians — arrive at the conclusion they do.

Their perception of the news media is the New York Times arguing for more, not fewer, abortions during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the same newspaper publishing an op-ed blaming Christians for the spread of the coronavirus.

I would counter that, yes, the Times is a liberal newspaper editorially, but there’s a difference between news and opinion content. The problem is that the line often becomes much grayer than it should be.


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Medical ethics or religion? Killing Grandma and other questions during the COVID-19 cris

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I bring this column to you, once again, from my news organization’s hastily configured satellite bureau.

That’s correct: I’m writing from home, where I’m properly socially isolated in the time of coronavirus. (Right, Ted Olsen?)

I launched the “Weekend Plug-In” column in January with big dreams of bringing readers new and exciting topics each week. Lately, though, it’s all coronavirus all the time, and guess what? That doesn't appear likely to change anytime soon.

Amid the COVID-19 horror stories, I’m stressed. I’ll admit that much. How about you? As a person of faith, I’m trying my best to trust in God. But it’s a crazy, crazy time to be alive. Can I get an amen?

Once again this week, I’ll forgo our normal format. Let’s focus on key coronavirus-related questions making religion headlines.

Power Up: The Week’s Big Questions

1. Should we kill Grandma to boost the economy?: Apparently, that’s not a rhetorical question.

Here’s how Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey described the issue on Twitter: “Today I watched a miserable debate unfold: should we let older Americans die or save the economy.” As Bailey’s Post story noted, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that “he and other older Americans should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the economy, which he said was in mortal jeopardy because of shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic.”


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Question for reporters: Global coronavirus pandemic is a BIG story, but exactly how big?

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In my 30-year journalism career, I’ve covered more major news than I can recall.

In most cases, I’ve experienced an adrenaline rush as I set about to do my job, which I consider as much a calling as a profession.

A few times, though, a particular story has felt absolutely overwhelming, like it dwarfed me and my ability to cover it adequately.

The first time came on April 19, 1995, when my colleagues at The Oklahoman and I suddenly found ourselves reporting on what was then the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil — the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In all, 168 of our friends and neighbors died that day.

The second time came six years later on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorist-piloted planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa. The death toll that day: 2,977.

Now, the world finds itself grappling with an invisible killer: COVID-19. As I type this, the global coronavirus pandemic has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths. The number of infections approaches 250,000.

In an interview with Poynter.org, NBC’s Lester Holt — whom I respect — said: “I always thought 9/11 would be the biggest story I would ever cover. But this is the biggest story we have ever seen.”

Wow. That’s an amazing statement from a journalist of Holt’s status.

Is he right? Is this “the biggest story we have ever seen?” I’d humbly suggest that we don’t know yet, as massive and, yes, as absolutely overwhelming as COVID-19 seems at this point.

I asked a few respected colleagues for their insights on that question as well as details on how their news organizations are covering this major, major news.


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