Dog bites man? That's not news. Any journalist knows that.

Pastor goes to church? That's usually not news, either. Except, of course, if the pastor doesn't believe in God.

Newspapers seem to love breathless features about godless congregations (almost as much as bloggers like me enjoy contextless overgeneralizations). But seriously, see The New York Times, CNN's "Belief Blog" and The Tennessean for relatively recent stories on Bible Belt atheists going to church. I critiqued a similar Tulsa World story for GetReligion two years ago.

Enter The Dallas Morning News with a pretty good report headlined "Atheist churches provide a community for Dallas nonbelievers."

The Dallas story is written by an obviously talented young reporter whose LinkedIn page indicates she helped lead Bible studies for children in a previous gig. Any constructive criticism I offer in this post relates not to the aspiring journalist but to improvements I wish editors at the Morning News — a major metropolitan newspaper — had initiated.