He’s a man of character with old-fashioned values. He’s adored by his wife and eight — count ’em, eight — children. He’s an all-around nice guy beloved by baseball fans. That’s the picture of Dale Murphy painted by a relatively in-depth ESPN.com story on the retired Atlanta Braves star, who is making headlines as he appears on the sport’s Hall of Fame ballot for the final time. Murphy’s “character” comes into play at the very top of ESPN’s 1,700-word feature: There was a time,... Read more
Of all the interesting things to consider as a media critic, the most important is probably story choice. We frequently look at individual stories and praise them or criticize them or point out interesting errors or omissions. But such an approach misses that big initial question of how story selection colors our understanding of the world more than anything else. I’m reminded of the G.K. Chesterton quote about the matter: It is the one great weakness of journalism as a... Read more
I don’t know about you folks, but to me is seems like the 2012 news cycle has been ending for the past three or four weeks. Everyone was already publishing their top stories of the year lists and then the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre turned everything upside down. Nevertheless, the year’s first Crossroads podcast here at GetReligion (click here to cue that up) takes another look at the recent Religion Newswriters Association list of the Top 10 stories on... Read more
It’s always hard to see people leave the Godbeat, even while you wish them well. Dan Gilgoff has been a religion news writer for as long as I’ve been here at GetReligion and his most recent work — at CNN’s Belief Blog — has probably been my favorite. But now he’s abandoned us for a fancy job as director of digital news at National Geographic! At least we’ll still have Eric Marrapodi there. As he left, he wrote up the... Read more
Strange, strange, strange — like something out of a John Grisham novel. That was my first reaction to an Associated Press news story about a Tennessee jury accused of singing, praying and reading Bible verses during deliberations: KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The attorney for a man sentenced to death for the torture slayings of a young Knoxville couple says the jury spent the majority of its sentencing deliberations singing worship songs and reading Bible verses rather than discussing the case.... Read more
After spending more than a week on the road, I returned home — as always — to find a large stack of ink-stained dead tree pulp that needed to be sorted a read. I refer, of course, to all the back issues of the newspaper that lands in my front yard. As you would expect, The Baltimore Sun folks are in full-tilt party mode with the advent of same-sex marriage in this very blue, very liberal Catholic state. Each and... Read more
A journalist I greatly admire shared this video, mentioning it was from the New York Times. It immediately struck me as a riveting piece of journalism with a not-too-small religion angle. I have no doubt that readers of this blog will find this piece remarkable. What I’d like to discuss is why this works so well. I wondered if a written story could even begin to convey what this video journalism does. As I was thinking on that, I found... Read more
The line between criticism and carping is not always clear. A story may appear to be well written, well sourced, balanced and complete to a casual reader. The same story, however, may appear naive, incomplete or wrongheaded to someone who has knowledge or opinions on the issues. An article in Wednesday’s Guardian entitled “Gay mass services in Soho abolished by archbishop of Westminster” illustrates this problem. Taken on its own terms, this article is very good. However, to those who... Read more
Now that my husband and I hope to bring more children into our family through adoption, we’ve entered into a complex and incredibly bureaucratic and confusing world. We’ve made new friends, too, who have helped us through the process. Some of them have adopted internationally. In fact, most of the other adoptive families we’ve met have adopted internationally. Some of our friends were in the middle of difficult Russian adoptions when the Russian government shut down adoptions from Americans. I... Read more
Does anyone out there in GetReligion reader land remember that narrow U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for arguments to continue about the Obama administration’s health-care law? On one level, that decision was about money and taxes, but buried down in one of the opinions written on the winning side was a highly significant, yet mostly overlooked, quote linked to the religious-liberty battles that dominated the religion-news beat in 2012. At the time, I wrote a GetReligion post... Read more
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