U.S. newspapers expanding religion coverage: report

U.S. newspapers expanding coverage

Reporters and editors say they are giving readers more issue-driven stories, covering faiths out of the mainstream and pushing the issue to page one From Editor & Publisher, May 15, 1999 U.S. newspapers are expanding religion coverage beyond the usual church news and parish happenings, according to a report in Editor and Publisher (May 15, 1999).  According to the report, newspapers are now doing in-depth studies of how readers practice religion and what beliefs they hold.

According to the report, reporters and editors say they are giving readers more issue-driven stories, covering faiths out of the mainstream and pushing the issue to page one.

“I think readers have been clamouring for more coverage, but editors are just now taking a look,” says Deborah Howell, Washington bureau chief for Newhouse News Service.

Howell, who started the first Washington bureau-based religion beat in 1990, says religion also showing up more in other issues. “It is really expanding in the ‘90s,” she says.

A 1993 survey from the Freedom Forum says that 90 percent of Americans believe in God or a higher power, 80 percent pray regularly and 70 percent identify with a religious group. Since 1994 membership in the Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) has jumped from 150 members to 240. Fifty joined in 1998 alone. Only full-time religion reporters are eligible for membership.

“We’re definitely seeing larger newspapers adding more religion reporters and some creating bigger sections,” says Debra Mason, Executive Director of the RNA, adding that smaller papers are also adding to a beat “that has really languished in the past.”

Editor and Publisher says its Year Book lists 357 religion editors and writers, although some carry both titles and not all are full-time.

A 1996 RNA survey of religion reporters found that 64 percent said their coverage had increased in the last five years, 75 percent said quality had improved and 67 percent of editors said they were more interested in religion coverage. At Religion News Service, a national wire service which supplies material on religion to media outlets, the number of clients has jumped from 200 to 400 in the last five years.

An April, 1999 report from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications showed that 77 percent of religion editors were assigned full time to religion coverage, compared to only 55 percent in 1987. As well, 94 percent said their papers devoted more space to religion than ten years ago.

Moving beyond Organized Religion

One reason for the change is that religion editors and writers have moved beyond covering organized religion.

“One of the problems with religion coverage has been that, instead of covering religion, we have been covering churches,” says David Lauter, LA Times specialist editor, who oversees religion. “The expansion is to look at the impact of religionon people’s lives more than just institutional news.”

Since he took the post a year ago, Lauter says he tries to find the religion angle in more mainstream stories. “There is an enormous amount of stuff that is a big part of peoples’ lives related to religion,” he says. “As Baby Boomers age and society changes, there clearly is a movement toward more people interested in religion in a broad sense.”

But not everyone is happy with the expanded coverage. When the Daily Independent in Ashland, Kentucky started a montly magazine-style religion section in 1995, editors decided to try to avoid having it look like a church bulletin. But when they carried stories about a lesbian minister, Free Mason secrecy and the Promise Keepers, reaction in the Bible Belt community was angry with some preachers criticizing the paper from the pulpit and advertisers withdrawing support.

Last year the paper killed the special section because of the complaints, as well as loss of advertising revenue.

Learning Curve

Religion writers say that proper coverage requires an investment in research and a true knowledge of all faiths.

“There is a big learning curve on this job, about nine months to a year,” says Steve Chambers, a 15-year news veteran who has covered religion at the Star Ledger in Newark, N.J. since 1996.

Once the beat is mastered, he says, it can be more interesting than many others. “I was dragged kicking and screaming into this beat because I didn’t know how good it was,” he says. “It’s been the best beat I ever had.”

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