It's time for an incomplete announcement.
As you may have noticed, the left sidebar of this here website now includes a new version of the GetReligion logo -- one that says "podcast."
You may also have noticed that, at the moment, this link does not work.
It will -- very soon. It should be working today. The logo will also be our usual blue color, as opposed to black, but that's another matter.
These podcasts are a joint project of GetReligion.org and the pros at the IssuesEtc. radio program in St. Louis, Mo. This is a pack of serious Lutherans who -- no surprise here -- are friends of the Divine Mrs. M.Z. Hemingway. They are also the rare people in religious radio who take a basically mainstream approach to discussions of the news. It's talk radio, no doubt about it, but with no shouting and very little snark.
GetReligion folks have been interviewed oodles of times by the IssuesEtc. team, primarily about timely posts about major stories in the news. You know, normal radio stuff. We promise that there will be no altar calls or appeals for funds.
A few months ago, GetReligion co-founder Douglas Leblanc (his current blogging status is inactive, alas, for professional reasons) had an interesting idea, during a kind of blue-skying chat session about this site. If GetReligionistas were going to be on IssuesEtc. from time to time, why not simply use that material in a podcast. Duh.
Why "Crossroads"? Well, you mean other than (turn it up) my love of Eric Clapton? I thought it was yet another pun -- like the term "Get Religion" itself -- that captured the fact that religion and the news keep colliding and there is no way around that.
The basic idea is for each podcast to go deeper on a topic that drew one or more posts, allowing us to spend more time talking about the stories behind the stories and what we think is going on in the coverage. We'll also have a chance to talk about things that come up in the "comments" pages.
I'll be on once or twice a month and the same goes for MZ. The other GetReligionistas will drop in about once a month, when they have the time. The goal is one a week.
It takes a little while to get iTunes up and running, but we plan to be over there. The IssuesEtc. team has uploaded the first podcast -- it's about Pastor Terry Jones and Co. -- but the link is still broken between the digital file and the logo.
Please hang in there with us. It'll be working in a few minutes (or hours).
UPDATE: And this just in. The podcast link is working and that first podcast is there for downloading. I'll let GetReligion readers know when the iTunes version is up and running.