Clashing perspectives on U.S. newspaper coverage of religion

Clashing perspectives

In the eyes of some, religion never had it so bad when it comes to U.S. newspaper coverage. For others, religion never had it so good. By Martin E. Marty, Sightings Project, April 9, 1999 Two perceptions about U.S. metropolitan newspaper coverage of religion clash.  In the eyes of some, religion never had it so bad. Many newspapers have trimmed their conventional weekend, usually Saturday, coverage to insignificance or left it in oblivion. As local newspapers get bought up by large chains, some publishers pay little attention to local color and interest. Along the way, the texture of religion in the fabric of the community gets neglected. Accountants who look only at the advertising bottom line that backs many features and sections write off the religious coverage as marginal.

Over against this and in the other eyes, religion never had it so good in many of the papers. True, few of them cover the Sunday sermons in the Monday papers, as the New York Times long ago did. True, many of them have shrunk the religion page, but many have done so in the interest of doing not less but more justice to the subject, having moved religion to the front page and merged it there and elsewhere with treatments of other significant news and features. Meanwhile, numbers of centers at places like Trinity College, Garrett-Evangelical Seminary and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and elsewhere, some of them funded--as is the Public Religion Project--by The Pew Charitable Trusts or by other foundations and endowments, promote religion coverage, thus helping assure that a new generation of capable reporters and editorialists will be available.

What prompts these musings is the appearance earlier this year of another section devoted to "Faith and Values," this one a venture of the Indianapolis Star/The Indianapolis News. It joins similar sections such as the pioneering and, we've been told, prospering efforts at the Dallas Morning News and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Publishers are giving religion a chance; the Los Angeles Times, for instance, has four full-time religion writers. The question, however, remains: Will readerships, the majority of whom are religiously affiliated, give attention to what is going on and let editors know their responses (pro and con) to what appears?

What's to cover in Indianapolis, the typical mid-American metropolis? The first issue announced that Judeo-Christian traditions will receive generous treatment but the increasing diversity of the city and its faith communities will also be apparent. Public religion, also in its political forms, will make headlines. And the editors promised attention to the personal workings-out of faith. Page one of the premier January 16 issue headlined "Religious Groups Have Agenda for Legislature" and "The Need to Retreat," with reference to area retreat houses and programs. Page three featured a forthcoming Billy Graham Indiana Crusade and an import feature from Dallas on a rabbi who is out to counter Messianic Judaism. This take-out section will not lack topics; it will seek readers, as other metropolitan newspaper editors keep their eyes on Indianapolis.

Sightings issues from the Public Religion Project, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and directed by University of Chicago professor Martin E. Marty.

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