You’re online at The New York Times, scrolling down the home page in search of Religion. Under the News heading you see Business, Technology, Science, Sports, and so on—but no Religion. Maybe under Features? Hmm: Dining & Wine, Home & Garden, Crossword/Games … but no Religion. It’s not as if Times editors simply ignore religion—think of the excellent regular Saturday column featuring Peter Steinfels and others—but maybe they don’t want to draw too much attention to it.
Well, the Times is quintessential Blue America, as David Brooks calls it: urban sophistication, East or West Coast-style. Ditto The Washington Post, where Religion also fails to make the navigation bar (though on the left coast, the online edition of The Los Angeles Times passes the test). And what about my home paper, the Chicago Tribune, in the heart of Red America? You’ve got Bears, Cubs, and assorted other sports franchises; you’ve got a generous list of Weekly Features—but still no Religion.
Strange, isn’t it? After all, religion plays a part in many Americans’ lives almost as significant as wine or stocks or the daily crossword. Which is why the pioneering religion coverage of The Dallas Morning News (www.dallasnews.com)—where you will find Religion on the navigation bar, as well as a substantial section every Saturday in the print edition—has been winning awards and readers (including plenty of media types) since the paper started a freestanding Religion section in December 1994. Someone seems to get it! Religion is important; religion is news; religion should be covered accordingly. Q.E.D.
Robert Mong Jr., president and editor of the News and a longtime champion of expanded coverage of religion, says that the paper “produced a prototype for a Religion section in 1984, after a wonderful series by our religion editor at the time, Helen Parmley. But we had so much going on then that we kept postponing a more ambitious approach.”
Ten years later, planning began in earnest, and the News committed staff and pages to cover religion more regularly, more deeply, and more broadly than ever before. The formula has been straightforward: strong staff writing, as well as contributions from knowledgeable outside writers such as Diane Winston and theologian Miroslav Volf.
Why Dallas?
Mong observes that “when you start covering a subject more seriously, you begin to see evidence of the subject in places that had previously escaped your attention.” In part, that has meant giving more attention to religious traditions outside the familiar boundaries of Christianity and Judaism.
Long before September 11, 2001, the News was offering readers regular coverage of the growing American Muslim community. And many other varieties of religious experience are duly noted as well. For example, a recent story focuses on the continuing appeal of Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), who came to the United States from India as a young man and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles.
This article is representative in another way as well: religion pieces in the News often bend over backward to report on a particular tradition in its own language, so to speak. Hence the sidebar summarizing Yogananda’s life does not say that he died in 1952 but rather that he “entered mahasamadhi—a yogi’s final conscious exit from his body.”
Still, coverage of Christianity predominates. After all, the United States remains overwhelmingly Christian (though many of those Christians are merely nominal, and the percentage of Americans unaffiliated with any religion continues to grow rapidly).
We may be tempted to say, Well of course The Dallas Morning News is going to cover religion more thoroughly than almost anyone else does: Dallas is the city of megachurches, deep in the Bible belt. But in fact there are many areas of the nation where the percentage of churchgoers is comparably high, and there is virtually no place where religion isn’t significant to a majority of the potential audience.
The News covers religion well because people at the top decided to do so, and readers responded. The current religion editor, Jeff Miller, has been at the News for 14 years and took charge of the section at the beginning of this year. He has seen a general improvement in media treatment of religion during the past decade, and he adds that “more people are coming into the business seeking to establish a niche in this area of journalism. That will just make for better coverage in years to come.”
Still, as our tour of newspaper Web sites suggests, there’s plenty of room for improvement. And for papers and other outlets that are ready to make the necessary commitment, The Dallas Morning News isn’t a bad model to start with.
John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture and an editor at large for CT.
Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere
The Dallas Morning News has pioneering religion coverage, a freestanding religion section, and a Web archive of its religion stories.
Other stories in our May issue’s Dallas cover package include:
The New Capital of EvangelicalismMove over, Wheaton and Colorado Springs—Dallas, Texas, has more megachurches, megaseminaries and mega-Christian activity than any other American city. (May 10, 2002)
Big City, Big MinistryHow did a top-25 list of ministries become a cover story on Dallas? (May 10, 2002)
Southwestern’s PredicamentCan the biggest protestant seminary in the world be both Southern Baptist and broadly evangelical? (May 14, 2002)
Parachurch PassionA Dallas food pantry was transformed when it turned the tables on who should do ministry. (May 15, 2002)
Sunday ColorsDallas churches continue to challenge the racial divide. (May 15, 2002)
The Hispanic ChallengeIt’s not easy growing leaders for Dallas’s fastest-growing population. (May 16, 2002)
Tex-Mex OrthodoxyA former Southern Baptist, Dmiri Royster is now a maverick of the Orthodox Church. (May 16, 2002)
