The Social Science Research Council has released a study titled “The New Landscape of the Religion Blogosphere.” A snapshot of some of the most influential religion blogs, its primary goal seems to be getting the religion-blog “A-List” to communicate and collaborate with one-another.

“The purpose at hand is to foster a more self-reflective, collaborative, and mutually-aware religion blogosphere. Ideally, this report will spark discussion among religion bloggers that will take their work further, while also inviting new voices from outside existing networks to join in and take part.”

Yes, The Wild Hunt is included in the study as “leading” blog on modern Paganism, I’m one of the few minority faith blogs included (along with a smattering of Buddhist and Humanist/atheist sites). It’s certainly flattering to be included, and I hope my inclusion will open some new eyes to the existence of a thriving Pagan blogging and podcasting community. Particularly to academics and the religion sites that are primarily journalism-oriented, as I feel our perspectives can often be overlooked on issues that concern us. Beyond that? I’m certainly willing to enter into discourse with the largely monotheist-dominated religious blogosphere, but I fear direct collaboration will be somewhat limited (on both sides) due to some sticky theological differences. In any case, it’s very nice to see religion blogs get some attention, and I urge folks to download the entire report.

If there were a Pagan blogging ecosystem I would be near the top of that food-chain. I don’t say this to brag, but to explain that because of this I’ll often receive complimentary items from folks interested in reaching my audience. This is a standard practice. People with stuff to sell send out free copies to media outlets and taste-makers hoping that their (hopefully) positive reviews will generate increased revenue. Similar principles apply to movie reviewers, radio and club DJs, and other media professionals. It is so prevalent that it is, for the most part, simply assumed that Roger Ebert didn’t pay to see “Transformers 2″, and the New York Times doesn’t have to take a trip to Borders to buy Dan Brown’s new novel. But according to the Federal Trade Commission I can no longer assume you know that I got my copy of  “Grimoires: A History of Magic Books” for free (I did), and could risk hefty fines if I don’t reveal the “compensation” they gave me.

“Today the Federal Trade Commission revised their “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” (click here to download), urging bloggers who review products, from a book to a video game system, to disclose if they received the product for free when giving an endorsement. According to the Washington Post, breaking these new guidelines could generate up to $11,000 in fines.”

What’s causing a controversy about these new rules is the double-standard in which bloggers have to obey these new rules, but newspapers and other traditional media outlets do not. In a revealing interview with FTC official Richard Cleland, Edward Champion lays bare the undistilled ignorance and bias of the people making these new guidelines.

“In the case of books, Cleland saw no problem with a blogger receiving a book, provided there wasn’t a linked advertisement to buy the book and that the blogger did not keep the book after he had finished reviewing it. Keeping the book would, from Cleland’s standpoint, count as “compensation” and require a disclosure. But couldn’t the same thing be said of a newspaper critic? Cleland insisted that when a publisher sends a book to a blogger, there is the expectation of a good review. I informed him that this was not always the case and observed that some bloggers often receive 20 to 50 books a week. In such cases, the publisher hopes for a review, good or bad. Cleland didn’t see it that way. “If a blogger received enough books,” said Cleland, ‘he could open up a used bookstore.’”

So if a newspaper receives a book, gives it a good review, and posts a link to purchase it, it isn’t compensation. But if I get a book, post a link to Amazon, and give it a good review, I’m being “compensated” because the publisher has the “expectation of a good review”. It’s simply ridiculous. As if the publisher doesn’t have the same expectation from the newspapers and magazines it sends comp copies to. Do they really think that newspapers were simply keeping these free books in a underground library or returning them to the publisher? It’s a well-known industry “perk” that reviewers get to keep the book/movie/cd they review (and just as often those “pro” unbiased newspaper reviewers sell their comp-copies to used bookstores).

Media critic Jeff Jarvis notes that the new regulations were supposed to target hated pay-per-post “sploggers”, but instead regulates speech and is a “monument to unintended consequence”.

“…the FTC assumes – as media people do – that the internet is a medium. It’s not. It’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism. I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they’re making media. They’re connecting. They’re talking. So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny’s to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed. Insanity and inanity. And danger. The regulations raise no end of questions. For example: How much do I have disclose? Before I say anything nice about anyone, do I need to list every advertiser I’ve ever had? Every possible business relationship? You think my disclosures are comical now, just wait.”

So from now on, under the FTC’s assumption that I would be so tickled by Llewellyn sending me a copy of “Priestess of the Forest: A Druid Journey” that I’d have no choice but give it a positive review (when in reality I left it to gather dust because I thought it just wasn’t that good) I will be posting a disclaimer with every review stating whether I received a promotional “compensation” copy. As for the many blogging Pagan book reviewers out there who receive promotional copies, you better start crafting your disclaimer statement now. This, along with plans in congress to exempt citizen journalists and bloggers from the shield law protections is quickly creating a journalism class-system that privileges money and institutions above content and context.

My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

Should you be judged by your graduate thesis? That very issue is heating up the Virginia governor’s race where Republican candidate Robert F. McDonnell is fielding questions concerning a 1989 thesis he submitted to Regent University in Virginia Beach. In it, McDonnell rails against feminism, homosexuality, contraceptives, and “occult” television shows damaging children. The solution to these problems? The government must empower the (Christian) church.

“…government at all levels must help create the legal and financial conditions to unleash the power of the church to restore broken families and create the safety net of pastoral care for families … every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators.”

The local Democrats are jumping all over this while McDonnell claims that he’s “moderated” his views since that “academic exercise” in 1989 and shouldn’t be judged by it. However, as Wendy Kaminer at the Atlantic explained in a recent editorial, the thesis does bring up some deeper questions about McDonnell, such as what role he now believes sectarian religious beliefs should have within government. Can non-Christians in Virginia trust that he’s “moderated” enough to treat all religions fairly once in office?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in their Fall 2009 Intelligence Report, focuses on the growth of Odinist and Asatru prison groups in the wake of court decisions granting them “certain rights” that prisons must accommodate. This being the SPLC, the majority of their focus is on racist manifestations of Norse Paganism behind bars, though they do admit that Asatru is largely “benign” in the free world.

“As practiced by Owen and others outside prison, Odinism tends to be a benign form of paganism, tolerant of others and close to nature. Behind the walls, however, it is likely to take on a more sinister cast, and many prison wardens have long regarded Odinism as the religious arm of white supremacist prison gangs. The U.S. Supreme Court has nonetheless ruled that Odinist inmates have certain rights that prisons must recognize. So while a decade ago a pagan volunteer like Owen would have been dismissed as a kook or, at worst, a gang liaison, Odinist inmates today can wear Thor’s Hammer pendants under their jumpsuits and request visits from outside leaders.”

The piece also debates what percentage of incarcerated Norse Pagans/Odinists/Asatru are racists. While one Asatru chaplain (Valgard Murray of the Asatru Alliance) says the number is as low as ten percent nationally, the Texas prison system says that racists are 90% of their Odinist/Asatru population. They also touch on a case where Murray testified against incarcerated Odinists in an ongoing lawsuit, garnering the ire of other Odinist groups. On the whole, this is a fairly even-handed report for a hate-groups watchdog and they should be commended for seeking out and interviewing Asatru/Odinist prison chaplains.

The New York Times gives a rather critical review to the new travel series “Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World” for not being all that, well, bizarre.

“He’s kept “Bizarre” in the title for branding purposes, but based on the Cuba episode, it now barely applies. In the course of an hour his most extreme activities are eating barbecued tree rat and taking part in a Santeria ceremony. The sight of his bald scalp covered in chicken blood is a bit unsettling, but he undercuts it with some all-American mugging and a big thumb’s up for the camera.”

Oooh chicken blood! Santeria! How bizarre! Nothing like exploiting a local religion to amuse your audience. The New York Times also dings Zimmern for conveniently overlooking the politics that led to all the “bizarre” idiosyncrasies of Cuban life (the fishing is great for tourists because Cubans aren’t allowed on boats, people eat tree-rats, all the cars are super-old), after all, we wouldn’t want to get too bizarre and upset the Cuban government now would we?

The Boston Globe reports on the increasing demand for hospital chaplains as patients admitted to hospitals now tend to be sicker and need spiritual guidance in dealing with life-or-death issues.

“Since 2004, requests for chaplains at the Brigham have jumped 23 percent. At Massachusetts General Hospital, requests have grown 30 percent since the hospital began tracking visits in 2006. And at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which expanded its pastoral care program last year, monthly visits are expected to rise to at least 540 this month, a 10-fold increase over the same time last year.”

It remains unsaid in this article, but if demand for priests, ministers, rabbis and imams are growing, it stands to reason that requests for minority-religion chaplains are also increasing. This makes credible and thorough training for Pagan chaplains an increasingly important issue, one that growing organizations like Cherry Hill Seminary (disclosure: I’m on their BOD) are trying to address in their curriculum. As Paganism’s second wave hits retirement and deals with the illnesses that often come with old age, will our movement be ready to meet their spiritual needs?

In a final note, congratulations to Pagan blogger Betsy Phillips at Tiny Cat Pants and Pith in the Wind who is starting a guest-stint at the major-league feminist blog Feministe.

“I’m a heathen, though not a very formal one. I hope we can talk about that, too, why I, the daughter of a Methodist minister, left Christianity and became a polytheist. I know paganism, broadly, is loaded with feminists, and yet, it seems to me, we rarely talk openly about what we pagans believe and why to other feminists.  And for good reasons. I know I feel like a damn fool when I talk about it, but it’s important to me and a lot of the reason I left Christianity had to do with being a woman, so maybe we can just try it and see how it goes.”

You can read all of her guest-posts, here.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

Even though Newsweek claims we are no longer a Christian nation (we are apparently all “Hindus” now), it seems like the Pagan press hasn’t gained much benefit from the rising tide of “spiritual but not religious” folks who believe in reincarnation and that there are many paths to religious truth. After the recent merger of PanGaia and newWitch into Witches & Pagans, and the announcement of Thorn magazine ceasing their print edition, I decided to take the temperature of various Pagan periodicals and the resulting picture is rather grim. Of the 32 periodicals listed at the Witches’ Voice, only a handful seem to still be active, operating on a regular publishing schedule, and dealing primarily with Pagan subject matter. Modern Witch Magazine is “out of publication” after one year and three issues, Witch Eye: A Journal of Feri Uprising promises to return in 2009, but the clock is quickly running out for that deadline, and the two best-known Pagan newspapers PagaNet and Widdershins have been out of commission for years.

When you factor in publications that actually have a national or international reach that small grouping of surviving publications becomes even smaller. And the ones that do survive seem to focus less and less on news and current events and more and more on “evergreen” content suitable for journals that come out only two or four times per year. Perhaps Jack Lux and Michael Night Sky are correct when they asserted in the latest issue of Thorn magazine that Pagan periodicals in their current state can no longer act as a functioning news organ for the modern Pagan movement.

“…the purpose of a magazine changes to suit its audience, and Pagan journalism may be fixating on a role for which it is no longer useful … perhaps the most useful goal of Pagan publications is no longer to disseminate information about outer limits, but to delve deeper into the ideas of the past forty years and fill the gaps between them. With the Internet and the growing festival network, magazines are best suited not for community building, but for culture building.”

As if to confirm the idea of a shift toward culture-building within our publications, Treadwell’s bookstore and Fulgur have announced the launch a new journal of occultism entitled Abraxas. Scholarly and cultured, printed in a limited edition, it is marketed almost as a collectible art-object rather than a “zine” to thumbed through at your local newsstand.

“Nearly all the material is published for the first time. Here may be found inspiring essays from luminaries within the esoteric community, many of them written especially for the journal. Artists too are well represented, both established masters and emerging talents: a feast for the eyes and soul. Our poets include Allyson Shaw, Zachary Cox and, from beyond the veil, Aleister Crowley, whose evocative verse ‘Babalon’ finally finds itself in print more than sixty years after it was written. Produced in a large quarto format, with 128 pages printed on high quality paper and richly illustrated in colour and monochrome, we hope Abraxas will offer you a strange mirror through which may be glimpsed the zeitgeist of the global occult community today.”

I’m not singling out Abraxas for any sort of criticism, it looks very lovely and inviting indeed, but to point to what might be needed to succeed today in a contracted world of niche publishing.

So where does that leave Pagan news and Pagan journalism? It seems almost solely in hands of bloggers, podcasters, and e-zine editors. While there are several excellent places online where you can find news and incisive editorial aimed at a Pagan audience, a large number of Internet publications seem to mimic the world of print, publishing sporadically and sticking to think-pieces, rants, and lighter fare. This leaves Pagan journalism in a precarious position, one that could cast us back to a place where dissemination of news to our communities becomes increasingly haphazard, prone to errors, and one-sided. A place where rumor and baseless speculation runs rampant. A place where mainstream journalism defines almost unilaterally who and what is newsworthy within the world of modern Paganism.

We need to start having serious conversations about how Pagan news is created and disseminated. We need to ask how well our surviving print publications are serving us, and, if Internet publications are indeed the future of Pagan journalism, how they can become more stable, sustainable, and accountable to the readers. In the next six months I’ll be attending major Pagan events on two coasts, in Florida at the Florida Pagan Gathering for Samhain (where I’m presenting), and at Pantheacon in San Jose during February (where I’m going to see if I can do a presentation). For those of you concerned about the Pagan press, and attending one of these events, perhaps you’ll join me in-person for that discussion. Otherwise, I urge all of you to get together at your own local gatherings, large or small, and talk about the future of our news, our periodicals, and what we’ll need to keep subsequent generations informed about the day-to-day events and changes that surround us.

Pagan author, teacher, and ADF Archdruid Emeritus, Isaac Bonewits explains his increasingly sporadic blog activity, and admits to having some issues with this whole “blogging” thing.

“I’m still a bit unclear as to what a blog is really for, if one doesn’t have something important to rant about day after day.”

I find it difficult to believe that someone of Bonewits’ infamy doesn’t have something to rant about day after day (or at least a couple times a week), I also find it odd that someone who has contributed to Daily Kos in the past isn’t quite sure about the many and sundry uses for the blogging platform (and ultimately a “blog” is just a transmission tool for content). However, I do agree that merely ranting every day isn’t that sustainable, that’s why most of the really successful blogs don’t simply climb up on soap-boxes and howl into the digital void. They share wonderful things, talk about books, promote music they love, provide you tips and tricks to an easier life, and discuss feminist issues. Heck there are even Pagan blogs who manage to find news items to share every day.

Ultimately, I think Bonewits portrays an interesting (and growing) development. Like many people, he’s doing most of his online discussion and interaction on Facebook, and as robust social networking sites become ever more ubiquitous, fewer people will feel the need to create a blog to establish themselves on the Internet. This is a good thing, not everyone is suited to a blogging platform, and we are now reaching a point where there are many ways besides the traditonal long-form regularly-updated blog to get one’s ideas and ideals across. That said, if you are looking for great regular Pagan blogging content (aside from mine, of course) just look to my blogroll, or the in-depth Blog Elysium for a cornucopia of choices, approaches, and points of view.

Several folks have written in to alert me that Pagan scholar Murphy Pizza has become the official Minneapolis Paganism Examiner for Examiner.com (the ultra-conservative funded pay-for-pageviews blogging site). This is exciting news because Murphy Pizza’s dissertation is about the history and formation of the Pagan community in the Twin Cities (aka “Paganistan”), so you could not ask for a better local commentator. In her first entry Pizza explains the unique character and long history of the Pagan community in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

“A number of years ago, one of the Pagan priests in the Twin Cities coined the name “Paganistan” for the long-lived and feisty Pagan community here. It was tongue-in-cheek, but the name has stuck; it’s a name that the Twin Cities Metro Area Pagans have proudly taken on as a moniker. Many people are surprised to hear that the Twin Cities boasts the second largest contemporary Pagan community in the US (only San Francisco’s Bay Area is larger). Often, they are equally surprised to discover that it has its formative roots as far back as 1972, when the Gnostica Bookstore was holding spiritual seeker classes on topics like magic, contemporary Witchcraft, and other occult traditions down on Hennepin Avenue … It isn’t only the size that makes Paganistan a unique and vibrant community. It also has been a religiously innovative community both in terms of the creation of traditions and practices, and in the way it expresses a diversity of paths and organizations.”

I wish Ms. Pizza a long and healthy blogging career. The Pagan blogosphere needs more local community-oriented coverage, so hopefully this will start something of a trend (I anxiously await Salem and Bay Area-centric blogs). So be sure to add her to your blogrolls and rss-readers ASAP!

I’ve noticed that the IntenseDebate commenting system has been acting a little buggy today. Specifically, I’ve noticed that some previously posted comments have disappeared. I’ve sent in a service request, and I’m hoping things will clear up shortly. My apologies if you’re having problems, if this persists I’ll look into suitable replacements that offer similar features.