f its divisions and interest groups. He makes it all seem easy.

Christian Media Come of Age
By Michael A. Longinow, Asbury College
RMIG vice-head

The task of trying to put journalistic structure to the ways and means of religious popular culture has perhaps never been more perplexing. Yet in its own way, it all makes sense. Christian pop culture, in particular, has come a long way. It used to be that Cornerstone, the Christian answer to Rolling Stone, was about the only Christian magazine on the rack that put heavy-metal artists on its cover while tackling tough topics like same-sex state benefits, racial reconciliation in places like South Africa--or Detroit--and corruption within ministry. Now Cornerstone has been joined by a mainstream-marketed magazine called Relevant. This is a slick-page publication that runs the kinds of photos Cornerstone ran (and still does), along with headlines like "Coming out in the church" and "Mission Aborted: A Personal Account of Abortion Recovery." Relevant also reviews books with titles like "Blessed are the Cynical."

Christian singer Sandi Patti's divorce at one time caused massive undercurrents in the Christian evangelical world. Amy Grant's did, too, but now Amy Grant is back on the shelves and has kicked off a new tour, while a group called "Mercy Me" is getting air time on secular radio stations for a piece about heaven, and Sixpence None The Richer's music is running background to a daytime soap.

Focus on the Family, once essentially an organization centered around a radio show has sprouted a publishing empire that includes publications putting foul-mouthed rappers on the cover--to spur Christian kids to think hard about the lyrics they're dismissing as harmless.

What makes all of this so interesting is that it's part of a coming-of-age of a Christian media movement that began with the founding of Christianity Today more than half a century ago. It's the voice of those who defy cubbyholes and other forms of boxed-in thinking.

Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks' Journalism and Popular Culture points out that what makes the study of journalism within popular culture so difficult and so fascinating is that journalism--and the cultures within which it operates--is a moving target. Each is like a river within a river.

The harder mainstream journalists try to get the camera focused on what Christian life and culture is all about, the less likely they seem to be able to get the whole picture. (Christian media doesn't do all that well with it, either.) Not that they shouldn't try. Ben Bradlee once said that the best journalists keep stepping up to the plate even when their batting average drops occasionally. We're telling the truth as much as we can. And what's true about Christian culture and its media marketplace is changing under our very feet.

As the editor of Good News magazine once put it, "God shows up everywhere." That's a paraphrase of what Mark Silk said to help close his Unsecular Media study of news within religion in American life.

The ways of God and of those who pursue and express their faith about God in the world are endlessly surprising and endlessly frustrating to grasp. Maybe we've forgotten how expected the unexpected should be.

Stewart Hoover's point in Religion in the News, backed up by Judith Buddenbaum's Reporting News About Religion, is that what we're seeing in these 21st century publications and surrounding media is the kind of movement that sparked whole eras in our nation's media history.

Rather than try to box them in, perhaps we should just cover them--as best we can. And leave the unanswered questions to the next edition. Or the next generation.

RMIG Member News and Views

Did you receive tenure? A promotion? Get married or have a child? Do you have a teaching tip? Send us your latest news and we'll publish it here.

Anthony Hatcher
Elon University

Anthony Hatcher was awarded a fellowship to attend a week-long seminar on "Reporting on Faith, Religion, and Values" at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. the week of Nov. 3, 2003. Hatcher will incorporate material from the seminar into his yearly course on Religion and Media.

Along with another Elon communications professor, Hatcher will lead 31 Elon students to Great Britain and Europe in January 2004. The winter term course, titled "From Gutenberg to the Web: The Impact of Media on Western Society," involves a three-week excursion to England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. Students see the sites of the Reformation and the beginning of the printed word in Western Europe, and studied Nazi propaganda techniques and the development of the World Wide Web.

Holly Stocking
Indiana University-Bloomington

Holly Stocking writes, "I have added to my ethics course a module on personal beliefs, including religious and spiritual values. The main question we consider: How can students negotiate these values in media organizations without violating professional norms? In the module, I draw from sociological research on Catholic and Evangelical journalists; in the study, journalists talked, among other things, about how they have transformed religious language into professional language so as to operate within accepted professional boundaries. I also draw on some research by my Indiana University colleague David Boeyink; Dave interviewed journalists about the relationship between their religious values and newsroom practices. I have found these research studies of great value not only for my students, but for myself, when I consider my own role as a college professor who is a practitioner of an Eastern spiritual path."

Stocking also wrote the lead chapter in Desperately Seeking Ethics, edited by Howie Good. The chapter, drawing on the thoughts of Morrie Schwartz, looks at journalists' decisions in the afermath of 9/11, through the lens of love and compassion. Schwartz was the subject of the popular book Tuesdays with Morrie.

Dane S. Claussen
Point Park University

Dane S. Claussen's fourth book, Anti-intellectualism in American Media: Magazines and Higher Education, is being released in November by Peter Lang Publishing. On Oct. 23, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania approved his institution's charter change, to become Point Park University. As chair of its Graduate Council, Claussen was deeply involved in policy changes facilitating its new status and name.

David Scott
University of South Carolina

The September edition of Critical Studies in Media Communication published David Scott's article, "Mormon 'Family Values' versus Television: An Analysis of the Discourse of Mormon Couples Regarding Television and Popular Media Culture."

Staffing of Specialists at Newsmagazines Falls to New Low

By Debra L. Mason
Executive Director
Religion Newswriters Association

Publishers of the nation's three major newsweeklies - Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report - have long known that covers featuring Jesus create "a buzz" that helps them outsell most other covers.

Yet the laying off of U.S. News and World Report religion specialist Jeff Sheler earlier this year leaves only Time magazine with a fulltime beat writer after more than 13 years in which all three newsweeklies had fulltime religion reporters or editors. Until 2002, both Time and Newsweek had had fulltime religion writers for over 50 years.

Other cuts have hit the newsweeklies hard as well, including reductions in bureaus and correspondents that religion writers often used to expand the number of religion stories published.

"The cuts at the magazines have hurt," said Kenneth Woodward, a contributing editor at Newsweek and religion reporter there for over three decades. "If you look at them, there's a lot less religion being run now. A lot less."

Sheler, 54, of Portsmouth, Va., was part of U.S. News and World Report's latest round of layoffs last June. He worked for the magazine 23 years, 14 of those on the religion beat that he pioneered there as its first fulltime religion specialist.

Recently elected as president of Religion Newswriters Association, Sheler remembers some of his editors' skepticism when the magazine ran his first religion cover story in April 1990. The cover on "The Last Days of Jesus" detailed research and debate about the historical Jesus.

The newsstand sales figures from that issue "blew everyone's mind," Sheler said, and at the time it was the second all-time highest selling issue, second only to a cover featuring Hitler. Over the next two years he wrote eight cover stories.

"In the 10 years I worked at U.S. News before covering religion, I can only remember one religion cover, and that was when the pope died … so it was a tremendous increase in the space and attention devoted to religion," Sheler said.

Newsweek also lost its fulltime religion writer when religion reporter Kenneth Woodward retired in 2002 to become an essayist and contributing editor after 38 years at the magazine.

Now, the only fulltime religion reporter at a national newsmagazine is Time's David VanBiema, on the beat for over four years. VanBiema, whose actual title is senior writer, is asked to write on other topics from time to time, but his primarily focus is faith.

New definitions of news
Sheler's dismissal and Woodward's retirement are only the latest changes in how newsweeklies cover religion, although most other changes have more to do with the nature of newsmagazines in general than the beat itself.

When Time magazine was founded in 1923, its first issue included a topic heading of "religion." Time founder Henry Luce was given credit for bringing high visibility to religious leaders by putting them on Time's covers. Newsweek and the magazine now called U.S. News and World Report, both founded in 1933, followed Time's lead and included religion in their mix of news.

But all three newsweeklies tended, in their first 40 years, to cover religion as hard news, reacting to events around the world. Time and Newsweek first hired dedicated religion reporters during World War II, but even then those journalists' focus was on events and institutions.

"News magazines these days do not feel obligated to be like a newspaper," said VanBiema. "Newsmagazines feel they can do stories they are interested in at this point. It's more of an opportunistic thing and less of a beat thing."

Although Woodward says he stopped denominational coverage 30 years ago, Time magazine's transition was more recent. At U.S. News, Sheler's focus was on in-depth, big-picture stories that were reported and written by himself.

Sheler's style of religion coverage "was the direction that Time later went," said Richard Ostling, religion reporter for Associated Press and Time's religion specialist for over two decades.

Fewer collaborations
The collaborative writing and reporting process that is a hallmark of news magazines has changed as well-for all beats. Ostling and Woodward agreed that at least through the 1980s, Time and Newsweek each had extensive bureaus and correspondents to help report a story. Many bureaus are now closed or have fewer journalists. Ostling said Time's writing staff is half as large as it was in the early 1980s.

Even so, Van��Biema said other reporters often help on the Time stories he writes, particularly cover stories.

At Newsweek, Woodward said more stories now are written and reported by one person.

Specialist or not?
Editors at newspapers and newsmagazines have long debated the merits of specialists vs. generalists. But for now, two of the three newsmagazines appear to prefer having religion coverage parceled out to "generalists" - writers who cover a variety of topics. But others say religion-with its many possibilities for inaccuracies and lack of context-requires a specialist who recognizes the potential pitfalls.

"I think it matters a lot because it's such a difficult field. I would contend it's one of the most challenging fields that is covered in journalism," said Ostling. His successor at Time, although he did not start out a specialist, agrees.

VanBiema said having a designated religion reporter helps put the topic as an agenda before the editors and prevents it from being a totally random and reactive story.

But at U.S. News, Sheler's for