Attention serious GetReligion readers!
You know who you are. You may be Catholic, Baptist, atheist, Eastern Orthodox, Mormon, Anglican or nothing in particular. Oh, and Lutherans of all stripes. You may have read this blog for 14 years, 14 months, 14 weeks or whatever. You may be a veteran religion-beat professional or you may be a reader who has carefully consumed mainstream religion news for years.
The members of the international team with The Media Project -- backers of this blog for 14 years -- want your help in selecting five truly great mainstream media religion-news stories for this year. It's fair to criticize religion coverage produced by people who just don't "get" religion. But it's also great to offer praise where praise is due, something we frequently do here.
We would like your suggestions by the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 3.
Note: We are talking about news stories, not editorials or advocacy pieces.
Note: We are talking about mainstream news media, not religious publications or websites. This can be news in all forms -- print or broadcast (with links online for those reports).
Note: When we say "best" we are talking about stories in which you believe the religious content and themes were handled exceptionally well by reporters and editors. We want you to pick stories worthy of JOURNALISTIC praise, not topics that you simply want to publicize because they echo your own beliefs.
We are looking for all the virtues of great journalism, with a heavy emphasis on accuracy, fairness and respect for the views of people whose voices are included in these reports.
For example, here is one of my nominees, the subject of a recent post with this headline: "Bodies trapped on Mt. Everest: The New York Times gets the Hindu details in this tragedy." You can find this amazing, epic report right here at the Times.
Yes, magazine journalism qualifies. For example, I recently poured praise on a piece at The New Yorker that, on the magazine's website, had this headline: "Roy Moore and the Invisible Religious Right." This is another of my 2017 nominees.
So please take this seriously. Many of you send us URLs, week after week, pointing us to religion stories, good and bad. Now focus on the good and even the great. The email from The Media Project team put it this way:
As 2017 comes to an end, we want to reflect on the most important and well-reported religion stories of the year. We'd love to hear from you. What do you think were the Top 5 Religion Stories of 2017? (note: we're looking for examples of stories you thought were well covered -- not a list of the top news events).
The stories can include a work of journalism in the form of a longer magazine article, a newspaper story, a mini-documentary/documentary on a religion story, a work by a particular journalist published or aired at a media outlet, etc. Since we are an international news organization, we'd like to highlight stories from around the globe. Please include a a headline, byline, pub name and link for each story that you nominate so that we can check and identify.
How to do this? Click right here and you should be taken to a form allowing you to submit five stories to the team.
If there is a problem with the form, please give The Media Project a shout.