Finding and Losing Religion Online and in Print

Coverage of religion and spirituality has been downsized or eliminated by many newspapers in recent years. But there still is a lot of writing and reporting about these topics online, on radio and television and in magazines. Some newspapers have shifted more of their coverage away from print into blogs. Cathy Lynn Grossman, who covers this beat for USA TODAY both in the newspaper itself and in her Faith & Reason blog, presents four concise profiles of journalists who currently or have reported on religion, each of whom have personal books on the subject, in A window into the faith of religion reporters. The four, and their books are: Barbara Bradley Hagerty (National Public Radio; Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality); Peter Manseau (editor of Search: The Magazine of Science, Religion and Culture; Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead); Cathleen Falsani, (Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist and blogger; Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace) and William Lobdell (former Los Angeles Times religion reporter; Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America — and Found Unexpected Peace).  Cathy, who is a former colleague of mine at USA TODAY, does a nice job of weaving together material about the books with personal information on the authors and quotes from each. The different takes by each author on their state of belief (and now unbelief, in Lobdell’s case) hints at the immensity of the world of religion, and why it’s a subject that deserves to be explored and covered seriously by the media.