GetReligion
Saturday, March 29, 2025

Mollie Hemingway

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So long, GetReligion

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It was about eight years ago exactly when I surprised Terry Mattingly by shouting his name as I encountered him on the street. His visage was familiar to me because I’d grown up reading him in “the Rocky” — the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colorado. My parents had always encouraged my siblings and me to read the newspapers and I devoured both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News every day. Front page to last page. I was interested in journalism from a young age, starting a newspaper at my elementary school and eventually editing the Yearbook at my high school in my junior and my senior year.


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Cheesiest Godbeat write-up of the year?

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Via the Deacon’s Bench comes this example of how not to write a story about a scandal involving a Roman Catholic priest. Deacon Greg Kandra’s piece is headlined “Great moments in journalism: priest fathers a child, newspaper smirks.” He thinks it’s so cheesy that the journalists should get remedial training.


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The warning in the atheist pastor story

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The New York Times today has a piece headlined “Minister Admits Overstating Her Credentials,” an update of sorts to the previous week’s fluffy profile of a mainline pastor (“After a Crisis of Faith, a Former Minister Finds a New, Secular Mission”) that began:


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Pod people: Religion and mass shootings

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Pod people: Religion and mass shootings

The Crossroads podcast this week was devoted to discussion of covering shootings. And in the time since the horrible shooting in Washington, D.C., took place, we now have reports of another horrific mass shooting in Kenya. There is some amazing journalism being done as this massacre unfolds. I’d recommend reading this New York Times interview of Tyler Hicks, a photographer who ran into the mall as thousands fled. The pictures that accompany the piece will make you gasp and cry, so be forewarned. But I think there is an argument to be made that we should see these images and have the appropriate reaction to them.


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Toasting the Godbeat

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Last night the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty honored Eric Marrapodi, manager of CNN’s Belief Blog, with its first Vine & Fig Tree Journalist Award. I had the pleasure of attending and had an absolutely fantastic time and enjoyed meeting or seeing again many folks on the Godbeat.


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Was the Navy gunman Buddhist? Does it matter?

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Some 12 people were killed by a gunman at Washington, D.C.’s Navy Yards on Monday morning. This being near the U.S. Capitol, reporters hit the scene early. Details came out slowly and sometimes incorrectly, even when sourced to D.C. police spokesmen. It was a difficult slog for reporters trying to figure out just what happened.


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Fresh take on Yom Kippur

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I wish we saw more coverage of liturgical holidays but I get why we don’t. How do you write something fresh and new about something that’s been done … for thousands of years? It’s very difficult to transmit culture or tradition as “news” — since, by definition, they’re not. So that’s why you see news outlets focusing on progressive churches or groups that change, rather than retain, doctrine. It’s actually a fundamental flaw in the transmission-of-information part of the news process … but that’s for a lengthier treatment elsewhere.


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