Did you know that the late, great CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, one of the most important news icons of all kind, once worked as a “church editor” for a mainstream newspaper in Houston (apparently the old Houston Press)?

That was a detail from his life that I missed. I had read, long ago, that he was a “cub reporter” after his college years, yet before he broke into broadcasting. But time as a “church editor”? That’s a journalism title from the old, old days, one that is even more condescending than the more common and inaccurate label “religious editor (as opposed to “religion” editor.

Anyway, a religion-beat friend recently send me a photocopy of a 1994 interview with Cronkite that ran in The Christian Century, the influential mainline Protestant journal. I can’t find it online, although it was quoted by Religion News Service in an a short obit — “And that’s the way he was” — in 2009.

Encountering that “church editor” label reminded me of the old “Lou Grant” show episode that I used as the opening for my graduate project at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which ran — in a much condensed form — on the cover of The Quill in 1983. The headline on that journal essay was: “The religion beat: Out of the ghetto, into the mainsheets.”

The “ghetto”? That was the “church page.” The overture of that Quill piece is long, but it will provide some context for the Cronkite remarks that I will share here:

As was often the case, Lou Grant was working on two problems at once. At first the problems seemed unrelated.

The Los Angeles Tribune had lost its religion editor. City editor Grant had searched far and wide and, of course, no one was interested in the position. After all, what self-respecting journalist would want to be stuck with the religion beat?

Problem number two was how to get rid of lazy, often-drunk, no-good reporter Mal Cavanaugh. All through this episode of Lou Grant the management of the Trib had been trying to find a way to get Cavanaugh to resign.

Then, a spark of inspiration. The script is simple:

LOU: Congratulations, Mal. You're the Trib's new religion editor.

Lou sits back beaming. The information seeps in a bit slowly on Cavanaugh, who blinks at Lou.

CAVANAUGH: Religion editor?

LOU: That's right, Mal. And I can't think of a better man to interview the clergy ... take ministers to lunch.

CAVANAUGH: Are you kidding?

LOU: Detail the theological frontiers in this country and abroad.

CAVANAUGH: That stinks! Before you stick me with a lousy job like that, I'd quit.

LOU: Quit? You haven't even given it a chance. You can't quit.

CAVANAUGH: The hell I can't. Just watch me.

Grant's newsroom associates beam as Cavanaugh storms out.

The television audience is left with the impression that Grant's problems are over. The religion editor spot is still empty, but who cares?

That led to this thesis summary:

The role religion plays in America and the world has been a well-kept secret in most of the nation's newsrooms. While reporters chase the latest stories in politics, sports, business, education and other subjects, the billions of dollars and hours Americans invest in religious activities receive minimal attention. Religion news is usually pushed into a tiny Saturday ghetto labeled "church news."

When news events escape the church page they are often covered by reporters with little interest in religion and little education in the style and language of religious leaders and organizations. Religion has almost been ignored by radio and television.

That was the past, sort of. For a few decades, before advertising for mainstream journalism tanked, it appeared that work on the religion beat was surging. That was a long, complicated story, one in which the rise of the Religious Right in the wake of Roe v. Wade convinced many editors to dive into religion coverage, as long as it was linked to something real — think politics.

Why read the Cronkite material? I still think it’s interesting to see some of the fundamental questions that people asked about religion-beat work long ago and continue to ask to this day.

Many people still assume that elite journalists “hate religion,” and that’s why they don’t “get” religion. That’s very simplistic. Some forms of religion are very popular in newsrooms, while others are seen as part of the dark, dangerous side of life in “red” zip codes. You know — those believers who want to sack Park Slope and other sacred corners of New York City.

Cronkite was a native of Texas, yet rose to the peak of media power in New York City. Keep that in mind as your read the following. First, let’s note his own description of his upbringing and his start in journalism.

Read this carefully:

I come from a Lutheran family that turned Presbyterian in my boyhood. That was primarily because of the convenience of the Presbyterian church in our neighborhood in Kansas City. When I was 10 we moved to Houston and my father swung all the way from the Lutheranism in which he'd grown up to Unitarianism. He helped found the Unitarian church in Houston in 1927 or 1928.

I attended that for a couple years until I got into a Boy Scout troop that met in an Episcopal church. The church had a wonderful minister who was also the scoutmaster. And I suppose you can say he proselytized me. At any rate, I was much involved with the church, and became Episcopalian — and an acolyte.

Later, when I worked for a paper in Houston, I was church editor for a while. The Episcopal House of Bishops met in Houston one year, and I became intrigued by the leaders of the church — fascinated by their discussions and their erudition. For a short while I though about entering the ministry. But that was a short while. Journalism prevailed.

So mainstream Lutheran to Unitarian to Episcopal convert and possible Episcopal priest. Noted.

Let’s keep reading, including the specifics of the next Christian Century question:

Stephen Carter gained a lot of attention with his book “The Culture of Disbelief” in which he argues that though Americans are very religious, the media and public life in general tend to trivialize religion. They don't take them seriously. Do you think that's true?

I wouldn't say media trivialize religion; I’d say instead that they don't pay attention to religion at all.

Religion has frightened away reporters and editors from time immemorial. They're afraid they'll get involved in a discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. And they don't think religion is a broad-based interest among readers and viewers.

When I was a church editor I came to admire the work of a church editor at the Detroit News, which was one of the few newspapers to cover church news on the front page. And the churches weren't at all happy about the coverage. They felt religion was being trivialized then too — when what was reported was the work of lay committees on this or that, or fights over property values or over the degree of tithing. The churches would have preferred not to have these issues covered. So media coverage is a two-edged sword.

Keep going. Doesn’t this discussion sound rather familiar? Some things never change.

Are the people who work in media themselves inclined toward a secular perspective?

That's probably true. Among my friends in the business I don't find a deep religiosity. I would guess that the percentage of religious people in New York journalism circles is less than it is in the rest of the country. But it is not exclusively secular. And I've found that some of the people who seem least likely to be churchgoers in the city room can turn out to be devout churchgoers.

That was my experience, during the 1980s and ‘90s. Now, would anyone want to predict what pews these journalists frequented or formerly frequented?

Let’s just say that it makes a lot of sense that Cronkite was a big success and a natural leader at CBS News. His religious background was, well, good — a “plus” even.

MAIN IMAGE: Screenshot from the live broadcast in which Walter Cronkite, as the CBS News anchor, announced the death of President John F. Kennedy.