“It’s still an uncovered beat in terms of space and man-power,” says Ken Garfield, 50, who has served 11 years as religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Garfield oversees the paper’s weekly Faith & Values section and writes six columns a month on faith and family.
“Now the political writer will write about Howard Dean’s religion comments,” Garfield says. “The medical writer will write about prayer and healing. The sports writer will write about the local team’s chaplain. Yet the religion beat isn’t perceived as selling papers.”
Garfield was born and raised Jewish; he and his Presbyterian wife are raising their children in the Presbyterian Church.
John W. Kennedy, news editor for “Today’s Pentecostal Evangel (Assemblies of God weekly magazine) recently interviewed Garfield and five other religion reporters for a “Faith in America” article.
Here are some of their comments:
Yonat Shimron, 41, is Jewish and has worked as a religion reporter at The News & Observer for seven years. She says, “Journalism covers public life, so it’s easier for a reporter to cover schools, government, business. Religious life is the private sphere, so it’s much harder.”
Peggy Fletcher Stack, a “40-something” religion writer at the “Salt Lake Tribune” for 12 years, declines to divulge her personal religious affinity. She says, “Because Salt Lake is quite a religion-drenched town, we devote at least three pages to the topic and, whenever it merits, a story on page A1.”
“A couple of years ago some newspapers started to scale back and some let their religion writers go,” says Susan Hogan-Albach, 44, senior religion writer at the Dallas Morning News. She earned separate master’s degrees in theology, religious studies, and journalism before spending 15 years in Dallas. She doesn’t identify her personal “faith background” because she wants to be perceived as impartial, she says.
“A lot of publications only pay attention to religion on Easter and Christmas,” says Mark I. Pinsky, 57, Jewish and a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He’s covered religion for the Orlando Sentinel for nine years.
David Briggs, 48, who identifies himself only as “a Christian” and has worked as a religion reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer since 1998, says the “continuing story of sexuality and religion” interests him.
“The secular media don’t understand how important religion is to many Americans,” says Briggs, who earned his master of arts and religion degree from Yale Divinity School and served 10 years as an Associated Press religion reporter. “The Bible speaks strongly about some aspects of sexuality. To see those challenged has provoked a major controversy in many religions.”
Interviewer Kennedy says religion newspaper coverage is typically relegated to one page per week.
I’m glad The Pilot has recently allotted more space for religion news, though I wonder if its expanded religion pages have helped segregate religion news and opinion pieces away from appropriate places among “regular” news and the much-read opinion section.
I often wonder what readers think of The Pilot’s religion/faith news and opinion reporting.
Any opinions?
Steve Crain may be reached at crain207@earthlink.net. or by U.S. mail at The Pilot, P.O. Box 58, Southern Pines, NC 28388.
