{"id":7531,"date":"2011-10-03T09:18:31","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T13:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/deaconsbench\/?p=7531"},"modified":"2016-09-30T17:36:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T21:36:59","slug":"how-an-ap-reporter-found-religion-while-covering-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2011\/10\/how-an-ap-reporter-found-religion-while-covering-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"How an AP reporter found religion while covering scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s something you don\u2019t read about every day, courtesy GetReligion:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

You might consider Associated Press reporter Tom Breen to be the anti-William Lobdell. Breen recently told me he eventually became a weekly Mass attendee after educating himself on the Catholic abuse scandals for his journalism job. His story is quite the opposite from <\/em>Lobdell<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>whose work<\/em><\/a> on the <\/em>religion beat<\/em><\/a> at the <\/em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> caused him to drop his faith and write \u201c<\/em>Losing My Religion<\/em>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead of re-writing Breen\u2019s story into an intro, I\u2019ll let him tell you about it before he answers some questions about the religion beat:<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was baptized a Catholic, but never really in any tradition other than a vague understanding of Christianity coupled with a sort of tribal pull toward the Catholic Church. My mother died when I was very young, and my father had enough bad experiences with church growing up in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago that he wasn\u2019t particularly driven to make sure my brother and I were raised as active members of the faith.<\/p>\n

My father is a journalist, though, and it was his influence that steered me toward news. After college, I was working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., at the time the most recent sex abuse scandals began to break in Boston. Partly because I had some Catholic bric-a-brac on my desk, my editor assumed I actually knew something about the church, and so I was assigned to cover a few local stories related to the scandal.<\/p>\n

I quickly realized that I didn\u2019t know anything about Catholicism, and so to avoid embarrassing myself and the paper I resolved to learn what I could. In addition to reading everything I could get my hands on, I started pitching stories on religious topics that had nothing to do with the abuse scandal, hoping to bring myself up to speed.<\/p>\n

This continued after I moved to the\u00a0Journal Inquirer<\/em>, the paper in my hometown of Manchester, Conn. By now I had discovered that I was interested not just in Catholic stories, but in religion generally. It was not only a fascinating topic, but it was one that not many other reporters were interested in covering, so I could pursue stories without stepping on any toes. I also had tremendously knowledgeable editors who were hungry for religion news. One of them put it to me in a way I\u2019ve always remembered: compare the amount of resources the press spends on covering primary elections, he told me, with the number of people who vote in primary elections. Now compare the resources spent on covering religion with the number of people who attend a weekly worship service.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s how I became hooked on religion coverage. On kind of a parallel track, I eventually became a devout Catholic, going through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and becoming a weekly churchgoer. Ironically, it was my work covering elements of the sex abuse scandal that led me to become an \u201cofficial\u201d Catholic; I learned all I could about the faith to make sure my stories were accurate, and my learning convinced me this was the truth.<\/p>\n

I realize personal belief is a touchy subject for journalists, but in the religion beat it\u2019s been a tremendous asset to my reporting. It\u2019s an imperfect comparison, but if you grew up rooting for the Chicago Cubs you\u2019re going to be a better baseball reporter than someone who\u2019s never been to a game. That\u2019s not to say I think active membership in a religious group is a prerequisite for the beat, but an ex-Cubs fan still knows the game even if she doesn\u2019t follow the team anymore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There follows a fascinating Q&A. \u00a0Read it all.<\/strong><\/a> And kudos to GR\u2019s Sarah Pulliam Bailey for bringing this story to light.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s something you don\u2019t read about every day, courtesy GetReligion: You might consider Associated Press reporter Tom Breen to be the anti-William Lobdell. Breen recently told me he eventually became a weekly Mass attendee after educating himself on the Catholic abuse scandals for his journalism job. His story is quite the opposite from Lobdell, whose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25,29],"tags":[11170,11178],"class_list":["post-7531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-converts","category-journalism","category-media","tag-converts","tag-journalism"],"yoast_head":"\nHow an AP reporter found religion while covering scandal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's something you don't read about every day, courtesy GetReligion: You might consider Associated Press reporter Tom Breen to be the anti-William\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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