Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc, co-founder of this here weblog, is not writing for GetReligion at the moment, but he’s still out there in media land — seeing things through GetReligion eyes.
In “The Jihadist Next Door,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Andrea Elliott’s Sunday cover story in The New York Times Magazine, Elliott turns her laser focus on the journey of one American youngster who decides to join a Somali terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda.
Six years ago today, Douglas LeBlanc clicked his Mac mouse and GetReligion was born as a small website on TypePad.
On December 1, 2009, CBA (which was formerly called the Christian Booksellers Association, back when Christian bookstores sold more books than gifts and other merchandise) asked the Department of Justice to investigate alleged predatory pricing by big-box stores and online retailers that threatens the very existence of the nation’s dwindling number of Christian retailing outlets.
As anyone knows who has read GetReligion for more than a day or two, the purpose of this weblog is — through positive and negative criticism — to lobby for improved coverage of religion news in the mainstream press. We like to argue that many major stories are haunted by “religion ghosts” that professionals need to learn to recognize and to include in stories throughout the newspaper, not just on the religion beat or on the religion page.
The current dialogue between this weblog and reporter Paul Vitello of the New York Times, in addition to raising some valid issues worthy of discussion, has helped us pinpoint another problem here at GetReligion that needed to be fixed.
The omnipresent Howard “Howie” Kurtz of the Washington Post offered this interesting tweet after the victory in the U.S. House by Rep. Bart Stupak and his coalition that opposes the use of tax dollars to fund abortions:
Well, The New York Times may get Judaism, it might not get Hinduism, but does it get Catholicism? Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has decided to use recent articles from the Gray Lady to show how Americans — especially journalists in his zip code — are anti-Catholic. Needless to say, this was an op-ed article that Fox News was happy to publish, while the Times declined to do so.
There was a curious post on the Utne Reader web site entitled “Overloading God’s Servers” that warns:
