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Let me draw your attention to this fascinating article in the Parisian weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur about the new generation of Catholics arising in France. The article « Plongée dans la galaxie “catho-réac-décomplexée” » in Le Nouvel Obs (with a circulation of over 500,000 it is France’s most widely read general information weekly) asks [...]

As I have stressed many times here at GetReligion, it’s important for readers to understand that reporters rarely write the headlines that accompany their stories. Editors and specialists at copy desks write the headlines. It’s tough work, and I say that as someone who did that job for several years early in my career. A [...]

Over at Intercollegiate Review, I have a piece with some helpful journalism tips. Here’s how “How to Be a Really Lousy Journalist for Fun and Profit” begins: There has never been a better time to consider a career in journalism. Newspapers are thriving, magazines are innovating, online journalism listicles are becoming more substantive, and cable-news [...]

Did you hear about the anteater that conceived a baby even though she had no male mate around? I mean, she had a mate, but he was removed from her area longer than the six months required to gestate a baby anteater. Theories for how this miracle happened include the very non-miraculous idea that the [...]

Truth be told, I still think that the question I asked a few weeks ago remains one of the most interesting questions one can ask about that big story that keeps unfolding down in Waco: “So, how did Brittney Griner end up at Baylor?” That’s an interesting question for Griner. That’s an interesting question for [...]

In a recent post about an error in a story about a new saint, readers talked about the notable lack of media coverage of another set of new saints — Christians martyred by Islamic invaders. One reader commented: The mainstream media didn’t seem particularly interested in a group of Catholics martyred by Islamic invaders. Every [...]

On a recent Crossroads podcast, host Todd Wilken remarked with interest on how many of the year’s major news stories have to do with religion. A cursory glance at the headlines proves it, year after year. But even the non-religion news stories frequently have religion angles. And so it is with one of the scandals [...]

Here at GetReligion, we focus mainly on critiquing the mass media’s coverage of religion news. Occasionally, though, we like to call attention to news related to the Godbeat itself. Alas, at least three well-known individuals in the world of religion news reporting have made or announced major moves in recent weeks. And as we all [...]

So a nun and two peace activists walk into a nuclear facility … It’s not the start of a bad joke, but the start of what could turn out to be a bad dream for a trio of protestors convicted of trespassing and defacing a nuclear weapons site. A few weeks ago tmatt mentioned the [...]

The first question I faced, in this week’s “Crossroads” interview, sounded relatively simple: Why did journalists struggle to use the word “fetus” accurately when covering the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell? Like or not, I have had to pay a lot of attention to this issue in recent weeks. For those who have been off [...]

At first glance, the current mini-wave of news coverage of former underwear model Kylie Bisutti is nothing more than a chance — in this search-engine-driven world in which we live — to slide the mouse-click friendly terms “God” and “Victoria’s Secret” into the same headline. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. On closer inspection [...]

Let’s begin this post with a quick definition from Burton’s Legal Thesaurus, 4th edition: civil liberties noun First Amendment guarantees, First Amendment Rights, freedom of expression, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, fundamental individual rights, guarantees from the Bill of Rights, human rights, individual rights, right to life, right to [...]

Absent a priestly predator is paedophilia a religion news story? In comments posted in response to my 24 April 2013 story “Paedophilia and the Radical Left of ’68″, Ira Rifkin questioned whether politics and paedophilia were properly within the ambit of GetReligion. Was I pushing too hard? Confusing the moral and ethical issues in the [...]

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s “Religion News on the Web” page is one of the places I go to peruse religion news. A headline from Illinois caught my attention today: AP: Politics and the pulpit: Black churches at heart of gay marriage debate in Illinois That topic interests me, so I clicked on [...]

Istanbul is the kind of place in which the past often seems to be just as real, or even more real, than the present. Sometimes this shows up in the headlines. For example, back in 2004 I visited the center of Eastern Orthodox life there and learned the history of the stark, black, closed gate [...]

Let’s begin this post with this link to the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law: Can.  1024 A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly. Now, keep that in mind as you read this Miami Herald story about Madre Laura, who was beatified by Pope Francis on Sunday: In her lifetime, Laura Montoya’s stubborn determination to [...]

There’s an old journalism joke that goes, “Q: How do journalists count? A: One, two, trend.” You can tell the joke is old since it implies that it takes at least three examples for a journalist to declare a “trend” and to write an article about it. In the Twitter age, journalists who wait ’til [...]

Oh to have been a fly on the fall during any editing discussions at The New York Times national desk during the time between the newspaper of record’s early report on the verdict in the Dr. Kermit Gosnell case and the final version that is currently online. Yes, there were a few changes. Now I [...]

When Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin made a comment about women being raped last year, the New York Times responded with, according to a search engine count, about 250 stories in under three months. A sample of the 19 (!) headlines from just the first two days*: “Republicans Press Todd Akin to Quit Race,” “Romney [...]

The New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a Mother’s Day interview with, who else, the head of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood does a few things that people either love or hate, but none so much as aborting more than 300,000 unborn children each year. The media are firmly on one side of this issue and [...]