The economic downturn has obviously hurt newspapers a great deal, but it’s hard to say which areas of coverage have been depleted the most. I have talked to people in many realms — international reporting, business, sports, entertainment — who claim their domain has been particularly hard hit. (Here’s a map from Paper Cuts that shows 2009 newspaper layoffs.)
But Cathleen Falsani, the Chicago Sun-Times‘s recently departed religion writer, makes the point that she is just one of four prominent religion writers who have been moved off their beats in the past month. The others are Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe, Eric Gorski at the A.P., and Peter Steinfels at The Times. This hardly means that religion will no longer be covered at those institutions, but that’s an awful lot of high-end human capital to leave one beat in a short time. I wonder what kind of religion articles we won’t be reading in the future as a result.
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It’s tempting to say “so what?” I don’t miss coverage of the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. But the latter figure does have a real-world effect on commerce, and sadly, religion does have a real-world influence on politics. But that’s the only aspect of superstition and myth that really matters, and I think that covering it from the perspective of politics and security is more important than looking at issues of faith.
The religious get their news off the internet now?
All kidding aside, religious news makes the front page ABOVE the fold all too often as it is and it is something the religious can crow about, sneer at, or feet ashamed for…. sometimes in the same article.
Who cares about religion articles anyway?
A bunch of clueless men/women making stuff up about a supposedly omnipotent being and assuming that they have direct access to infallible moral advice.
Good riddance to them, I say.
If Jesus comes back and no one is there to cover it, will it still count?
But do these newspapers still offer horoscopes? If so, then all’s not lost.
Religion is vital to millions of people in the world, therefore it is vitally important for everyone to see what’s happening. When the Pope changes the rules for seminaries, or fundamentalists urge the death penalty for gays in Uganda or possible undoing of the government in Northern Ireland.
Religion reporters are the ones who provide context and background for understanding these issues. They analyze rather than just repeating press releases. We need more of these this, rather than less.
In America, Religion has been covered in the politics section entirely for at least the past 10 years.
Even a discussion regarding the reporting of religion brings out polarized responses. Yikes! Where did the thoughtful Freakonomics commenters go?
I don’t understand the commenters that say “so what”, and then commence with the anecdotal verbal attacks. They obviously do not think much of religion, but it’s this kind of attitude that gives fuel to the religious extremists. By dismissing these experiences with a wave of a hand and a snide comment, it only creates a deeper divide.
Regardless of your feelings regarding religion, you should be concerned that the voices of the moderates are disappearing (which is what I would consider these writers to be, given their affiliation with newspapers named) – without them, all we have are the voices from either extreme, which have no desire to actually talk or listen to each other.