Jim Romenesko

Wait, Jim Romenesko is new editor of Religion News Service? Nope, but welcome Jerome Socolovsky

Sometimes, Twitter handles can make life more fun.

For example, Monday's news that @jeromesoco has been named editor in chief of Religion News Service gave my GetReligion colleague Jim Davis a nice chuckle.

"Oh, that's funny!" Jim said. "I misread that at first as Jim Romenesko!"

Romenesko's name is, of course, familiar with media types: He's a prominent blogger on the internal goings-on of journalism. (His real Twitter handle, by the way, is @romenesko.)

Meanwhile, the actual new RNS editor is Jerome Socolovsky (whose last name I am copying and pasting to avoid any spelling mishaps).

Socolovsky succeeds Kevin Eckstrom, who left the nonprofit news organization at the end of May to become chief communications officer for the Washington National Cathedral.

For those not familiar with Socolovsky, what is his background? RNS' press release on his appointment provides details:


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Miracle of technology bites Houston Chronicle and mars excellent reporting on faith-healing evangelist

Media blogger Jim Romenesko called attention to an embarrassing photo mishap by the Houston Chronicle.

The text of the Texas newspaper's correction:

Correction, Feb. 17, 2015
A photograph appearing with a story on page A1 about Reinhard Bonnke on Monday was digitally manipulated by the evangelist's organization to superimpose the preacher's image on a crowd of about 1.6 million gathered for a 2000 crusade in Lagos, Nigeria. Mary-Kathryn Manuel, U.S. director for Bonnke's Christ for All Nations, said the photo was a combined shot of the crowd during daylight hours and Bonnke preaching after nightfall. The photo, provided to the newspaper by Bonnke's crusade, was not represented to the newspaper as a digitally altered image. The Houston Chronicle apologizes for this error.

Unfortunately, the doctored photo marred the Chronicle's excellent reporting on Bonnke.

The top of the newspaper's meaty, 1,500-word report:

Strange things happen when African evangelist Reinhard Bonnke begins preaching, believers will tell you. The blind see. The deaf hear. And — most astoundingly, as in the case of a Nigerian man — the dead live.
Such "miracles" trace their authority to the pages of the New Testament, and Bonnke's ministry is careful to stipulate that God is the power behind such "signs and wonders." Still, events such as the purported resurrection of auto crash victim Daniel Ekechukwu during Bonnke's November 2001 crusade in Onitsha, Nigeria, have made the fiery German evangelist a charismatic star of the developing world.
At 74, Bonnke - still relatively unknown to secular Westerners - is the chief proselytizer at Florida-based Christ for All Nations, a globe-spanning ministry that claims to have saved more than 75 million souls and, in one recent single year, garnered almost $15 million in grants and contributions.
This week, Bonnke will bring his message to Houston for two nights at the BBVA Compass Stadium, his fourth stop in his first American crusade.
"At every single meeting we see these miracles," said Daniel Kolenda, Bonnke's top lieutenant, ministry heir-apparent and designated spokesman. "It just happens in an unobtrusive way and all glory goes to Jesus. You might think we're just a miracle show coming to town, like a circus, but what we're after is salvation, saving souls."

That dramatic opening certainly grabs a reader's attention. 

 


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