EDITOR’S NOTE: Kenneth L. Woodward was the faith author at Newsweek from 1964-2002. He’s the creator of varied books on faith, politics, Catholicism and tradition, together with “Getting Faith — Religion, Tradition, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Period of Obama.”
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I by no means went to journalism faculty or took a journalism course. I discovered on the job beneath an excellent editor who by no means completed school.
Studying Terry Mattingly and his crew of good contributors at GetReligion through the years was like that on-the-job coaching.
I particularly relished the right here’s-what’s-missing items mentioning the faith gaps in tales (“ghosts,” in GetReligion-speak), together with important questions that weren’t requested, core information that had been omitted and views not sought.
Then there have been the numerous can-you-hear-the-axes-grinding tales mentioning the place ideology received in the best way of primary reporting.
Additionally, there have been the atta-boy items, too, that showered measured appreciation on work nicely executed, angles discovered that nobody else had observed. That was the opposite aspect of the equation.
At Newsweek, the place I labored for extra years than Job had boils, as soon as a narrative had been written and survived three layers of editors, we writers nonetheless had fact-checkers to reply to: The place’d you get that? Who was your supply?
GetReligion did a few of that too. However gently. Extra gently than I’m inclined to do.
Mattingly and his mates may do all this as a result of they suppose faith is a crucial dimension of public life and affairs, particularly on issues tied to the First Modification.
This could make them outliers in most newsrooms. I’ve the sensation that many of the people who’ve written for GetReligion are religiously shaped and convicted themselves, in varied traditions. Which is sensible: I’ve all the time thought that these take their very own faith critically are higher ready than the religiously detached to know religions not their very own.
I like very a lot what Terry informed Faith Information Service: “Opinion is reasonable,” he stated. “Reporting is pricey.”
That’s an enormous purpose why newspapers have just about disappeared. Newsmagazines too: It took luggage of cash to run bureaus world wide. It takes a smaller bag, however a bag nonetheless, to maintain an operation like GetReligion working. An excessive amount of, I take it.
There may be nothing I’m conscious of to take its place.
Hail and Farewell. It was a hell of a trip.
