The Chicago Sun-Times

Memory eternal: Religion-beat pro Roy Larson escaped stereotypes and became a pioneer

During the 1981-82, I spent most of my time at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign — taking graduate seminars, teaching reporting labs, writing my weekly column on rock music for the local daily and burying myself in graduate-project research.

The topic of that thesis — a condensed version ended up on the cover of The Quill — was the beleaguered status of religion writing in most American newsrooms. Over and over again, I heard editors give two reasons (in one form of another) for why they avoided covering religion: (1) Religion news was boring and (2) religion news was too controversial.

That’s the ticket. There were just too many boring and controversial religion stories out there.

Then a story broke in The Chicago Sun-Times that had everyone talking. It certainly was controversial, but no one thought that it was boring. The opening was a blockbuster, focusing on the most powerful leader in America’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese:

A federal grand jury in Chicago is investigating whether Cardinal John P. Cody illegally diverted as much as $1 million in tax-exempt church funds to enrich a lifelong friend from St. Louis.” It went on to report: “The grand jury has issued a subpoena for Cody’s personal banking records as well as one seeking financial documents of the Archdiocese of Chicago dating back to the mid-1960’s.

Church officials were not amused. A member of Cody’s legal team said that the “Cardinal is answerable to Rome and to God, not to the Sun-Times.”

The religion writer on that investigative team was Roy Larson, a former Methodist minister who became a newspaper reporter.

On one level, he fit a religion-beat stereotype that was common when I first started considering this line of work: That of the tired liberal Protestant minister who retired from his pulpit to run a newspaper religion-news section. In the case of Larson, the problem with this stereotype is that his skills as a mainstream hard-news journalist were real and immediately obvious.


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'Pinkwashing,' Israel, LGBT activists and the conference the mainstream media missed

'Pinkwashing,' Israel, LGBT activists and the conference the mainstream media missed

Anti-Israel activists are a varied lot. Some seek a particular political change in Israel, such as an end to construction of West Bank Jewish settlement housing that they believe undermines any reasonable, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Then there are those who oppose everything and anything Israel does because -- well, because I believe their ultimate goal is the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement by a single Palestinian-dominated nation. They're more than just anti-Israel; they're really anti-Zionist, in that their hostility is not limited to Israeli government policies but to the very idea of there being a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Moreover, they hold to that anti-Israel/anti-Zionist position even if the issue at hand is one they would normally support big time if any other nation were involved. The latest example of this relates to the issue of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights and societal acceptance.

The Israel-be-damned-24-7 crowd rejects the many legal gains that LGBT people have achieved in Israel by calling it "pinkwashing." Given the diversity and sensitivities within the LGBT community, the term itself sounds to me like outdated, negative stereotyping.

Nevertheless, the term is used to reference the activists' claim that Israeli society's liberal approach toward LGBT rights is insincere and hypocritical and meant only to divert attention from what the activists insist is Israel's unconscionable treatment of Palestinians.

The issue surfaced in a big way at last month's Creating Change Conference held in Chicago.


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Logic? Some reporters should think harder about Catholic stuff before clicking 'send'

Hey, reporters and editors: Can we talk? Let's include people who work at religious publications and wire services (Catholic, especially, in this case), as well as those who work in the mainstream press.

Some things are getting into cyber-print, during the tsunami of Pope Francis coverage, that really have me scratching my head. 

Trust me, I understand that there are plenty of journalists out there who do not agree with the teachings of the Catholic church. #Duh. I have disagreements with Rome myself. No one needs to agree with a religious group in order to cover it accurately.

I also know that there are reporters who do not know very much about what the Catholic church teaches. That's OK, too, so long as they know what they don't know and are willing to apply their journalistic skills to finding on-the-record sources who can help them get details right, as well as handle the debates that take place when Catholics argue with one another.

But then there are headlines and stories like this one in that ran in The Chicago Sun-Times that just don't make sense. In this case the headline proclaims: "Fired from Catholic school for being gay, she's now seeing the pope." Right, this story was linked to the White House invitations that were award to outspoken critics of Catholic doctrines.

But before we look at the story, let me ask -- just between us journalists -- a question or two. Here goes. How many of you know gay and lesbian Catholics who, when it comes to what the Catechism says about sexual morality:


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