How is the Godbeat supposed to work?

I am one of those who are not that interested about the Dallas paper specifically. There are always ups and downs with individual papers. I am interested in the bigger question – how is the media covering religious and spiritual issues.

I see religious articles in the hard news sections of my local paper and in the weekly religious pages. From what I can see, the distinction that the editors make is reasonable. Articles that serve to teach what some religion believes show up in the religion section. Also good news and soft news stories show up there.

I don’t think there are any particular rules that one can apply – some stories belong on page 1 and some in the religion section.

Please note, Terry, that in the post you quote from above, I didn’t say that I thought our new model – i.e., no freestanding Religion section – was an improvement. I said it was working.

The purpose of eliminating the separate section was to save money. My point was that a function of that decision might be (and so far is) that our religion stories would get good display, and draw a wide audience, in the Metro section and on Page One.

As our editor, Bob Mong, wrote to one concerned reader, “For reasons I don’t entirely understand, we could never build even a modest advertising base for the stand-alone section. I can assure you, no paper in the country tried harder than we did to garner such support.” We worked long and hard to make the DMN Religion section as good as it could be. One result was that we produced a weekly section that was smart, varied, entertaining, illuminative, well-written, well-edited (I hope) and visually arresting. Another result was that our writers spent most of their time writing for a section that was wrapped pretty deeply inside the Saturday newspaper – and a section that, no matter where it was physically placed in the paper, was thought of as outside the “real news” sections. Still another result was that advertisers looked at our award-winning section, and yawned.

So now we’re trying something else. It’s not that different from the way any other beat is approached. Political news has to compete with other kinds of news for space in the daily run, and it will only succeed if talented, experienced writers are assigned to cover it and if the editors “get” its importance. Education news has to compete with other kinds of news for space in the daily run, and it will only succeed if talented, experienced writers are assigned to cover it and if the editors “get” its importance. And, now, so, too, religion news. Is this a bad thing?

As for the question of how the blog audience stacks up against the paper-product audience, our experience (which is typical) is this: The blog audience is comparatively small, but growing rapidly. The hard-copy audience is comparatively large, but flat or declining. All of us who remember high school math (and why we had to buy that graph paper with the little blue squares on it) know that if you plot those two functions, eventually they will intersect, one on the way up, the other, not.

AP and Reuters keep proving themselves to be unreliable at the basics of reporting. A new and reliable wire service would sweep them away like pillbugs down a swollen creek.

When I was interviewing for religion-beat jobs, one paper I talked to told me the religion reporter they hired would be part of the features desk. The paper where I wound up – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch – told me its hire would be part of the metro desk. That distinction was important to me because it said something about what the editors at each paper thought about religion coverage.

Like a lot of papers we have a Saturday religion page that anchors a bunch of church ads, and I’ve had mixed feelings about that page since I arrive here in 2004. In one sense, it’s great that at some point newspapers thought enough of religion as a news subject to dedicate a page (or, as in Dallas and other cities, an entire section) to religion coverage. On the other hand, if a paper like mine sees the religion beat as integral to the metro coverage – alongside politics, education, cops, courts, etc. – why is that Saturday religion page necessary? I think religion pages (and maybe religion sections, like DMN’s) are relics of a time when fewer editors understood how important religion is to the daily lives of readers.

Yes, that means that as religion reporters we have to compete for space in the daily paper, but as Bruce Tomaso says, stories that Jeff Weiss and Sam Hodges write will move out to A1 and other DMN section fronts where – yes, I’m biased – they belong.

When serious religion coverage is part of a paper’s main report the religion reporter is (hopefully) accorded more latitude and respect by editors – and by readers. Martha asks if religion reporters will be taken off big stories by editors who don’t trust they can handle themselves beyond the Ladies Auilliary Bake Sale. I think that misses the point. I would argue the Denver Post’s Eric Gorski IS one of that paper’s star reporters. It’s been a long time since religion reporters wrote about the macaroni & cheese dinner at the local Methodist church. Most good editors realize that.

Jeff’s and Sam’s work at the Morning News deserves to be on A1 more often, and I’m happy for Dallas newspaper readers that now they’ll see more of it.

Maureen,

Care to substantiate the charge that AP and Reuters are “unreliable”? Care to propose a “reliable” alternative? I know – how about UPI!

“I would argue the Denver Post’s Eric Gorski IS one of that paper’s star reporters.”

That’s what I’d like to see proven, Tim. Moving away from the particular of what “The Dallas Morning News” did, to the general of all papers, do they indeed consider X a star reporter qua reporter on religious affairs? Do they think “X is a damn fine reporter, shame to waste him/her on religion; get him/her on a real beat”? Do they, in other words, take religion seriously as a topic in itself or only perk up when there’s a nice juicy scandal to sell loads of papers?

Did anyone else see that the LA Times is reorganizing to break stories on line and then follow up in print! I hear Hurst wheezing…

As an authentic, practicing Catholic (sad that one has to say something like that nowdays, especially if one is not a saint himself), I found that the DMN Religion Section was tilted to the left when it came to Roman Catholic issues: sources (e.g., NCR) were almost always left of center; the staff was either non-Catholic or seemed not sure of what to think about Church teaching; non-inhouse authors were 99% heretical nuns and ex-priests who did not identify themselfs as such, and folks who detested the Catholic view on the practice of homosexuality or infallibility or women or whatever; letter writers spewing disinformation and venom about the Church; etc. As a result, and because of my love for the Church, it became necessary to read the Religion Section defensively rather than for information or pleasure. Only once was it possible to write a letter to the editor praising some truley Catholic article; by Alice Von Hildebrand, I think.
So, I was sad to see the Religion Section buried in Metro in favor of a blog, because now there will be two left-of-center places to blur Church teaching.
That said, it would be uncharitable to not mention the top drawer writing ability and character of the staff; Jeff and Bruce and Mary Jacobs, especially. They make me envious, especially since there is no darn spellcheck on this blog.