By Michelle Baker

A whistleblower in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached out to a friend because he wanted media attention on a 74-page complaint his twin brother had filed with the IRS on Nov. 21, 2019.

The focus of the complaint: the church had secretly put members’ money into a set of investment funds, where it grew to $100 billion in just over 20 years.

That friend connected the whistleblower, Lars Nielsen, with Paul Glader, executive editor of Religion Unplugged, a non-profit online news magazine.

“When I saw the findings, I knew it would be a big story,” Glader said.

Glader was a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years and has written stories for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christianity Today and Forbes.com.

Nielsen told Glader he had sent the complaint to The New York Times and The Washington Post, but he had not received a response from either. Frustrated, Nielsen agreed to an exclusive story with Religion Unplugged.

“He had this on his conscience,” Glader said. “He wanted it to appear in December for end-of-year giving and settling tithes with the church.”

Glader read the complaint and began investigating the laws related to Nielsen’s claims. He retained an attorney on behalf of Religion Unplugged.

The complaint stated that the church’s investment division, Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc. (EPA), had not met the requirements for operating as a tax-exempt organization. EPA is registered as a 509(a)3 and serves as an auxiliary to the church; however, according to the complaint, EPA has made no religious, educational, or charitable distributions in more than 20 years.

The complaint urged the IRS to strip EPA of its tax-exempt status. It also alleged that EPA could owe billions in taxes.

Story required extreme care

“There were elements in the report that were easily verifiable and other elements that were not,” Glader said. “I wanted to be extra careful about some of the assertions about non-profit structures and tax laws.”

Based on this careful reporting strategy, Glader bumped back his publishing deadline by one week and set a new deadline of Monday, Dec. 16.

“We considered every word, every sentence, every fact,” Glader said.

In early December, though, Nielsen told Glader he had heard from The Washington Post.

At that point, Nielsen was faced with leveraging his promise of an exclusive to Glader against greater media exposure in The Post.

“He was trying to be as honest as he could with both sides,” Glader said. “He informed me that The Post was working on something.”

The Washington Post had created a Rapid Response Investigative Team to cover the story and hired a reporter from The Guardian. It also put an IRS specialist on retainer.

And Nielsen told The Washington Post when Glader planned to publish his story.

Religion Unplugged, The Post in a race

“I was hoping they would let me go first,” said Glader, who wanted to push the publication date back one more day to Tuesday, Dec. 17, to contact EPA and the church for comment. “But I realized they might try to publish the story on Monday.”

Glader did reach EPA Managing Director Roger Clark by phone–something The Post did not do. Clark’s response before hanging up was straightforward: “We don’t really answer questions with the public press. So, thanks.”

An email from church spokesman Eric D. Hawkins indicated that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not give information about its financial decisions beyond what it provides on its website.

Glader made both contacts before Tuesday.

On the evening of Monday, Dec. 16, The Post published its story.

Glader published 20 minutes later.

On Tuesday, the story appeared on page one of The Post’s print edition.

“We broke the story at the same time,” Glader said. “It was essentially the same story with some differences between them.”

To name the whistleblower, or not?

Perhaps the biggest difference in their coverage was that The Washington Post named the whistleblower who filed the complaint–Nielsen’s brother David A. Nielsen–and Glader did not.

“We felt there was an ethical issue there,” Glader said. “Federal code doesn’t look favorably on naming whistleblowers, and it was not worth a possible lawsuit.”

Glader said Religion Unplugged named David in its second story, since The Washington Post had already made his identity public.

The Washington Post also published allegations that, as a 509(a)3, Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc., was committing fraud and violating tax laws. Glader’s expert analyst said it was unknown if EPA’s actions were fraudulent.

“It’s a gray area of the law and unclear,” Glader said. “And we don’t know what kind of 509(a)3 Ensign is, and that makes a difference.”

Though the two news outlets broke the story minutes apart, The Washington Post began Tweeting that its story was exclusive. After Glader spoke out via Twitter about the disingenuous nature of this claim, The Post removed the exclusive label from its headline on the web and made no more similar claims on Twitter.

As a result of the story, Glader said Religion Unplugged’s web traffic in December was its best since its February launch.

He also allowed other news outlets, including Zero Hedge and Newsweek, to republish his story.

“I don’t have hard feelings toward anyone,” Glader said. “We did things right, and I even thought we were fair to the church in our follow-up stories that week.”

Practicing what he teaches

Since this story broke, close to 30 more stories have been published related to the complaint. This reporting has put pressure on the church to intensify its response to its members, which included three YouTube videos from church leaders. Glader said he is confident the reporting will pressure the government to act.

“I don’t know what’s happening in the IRS related to this story,” he said. “but if it’s on the front page of The Post and other sites, we should see some action in state legislatures or Washington.”

Glader is unsure if the news coverage has impacted church attendance, membership, or tithing.

“The church may already be struggling a bit on some of those fronts,” he said. “Transparency is good for religion. It’s good for the members, the same way it’s good for governments.”

Glader is an associate professor of Journalism, Media and Entrepreneurship at The King’s College in New York City, where he directs the McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute. He is also professional freedom & responsibility chair for AEJMC’s Religion and Media Interest Group.

He said he did not talk with his students about the story while he was working on it, but he is glad to see his students talking and Tweeting about it. He intends to use this story as a case study in classes.

“I think it’s good for our students to see us practicing what we teach,” he said.

Religion Unplugged is funded by The Media Project, a global network of journalists that provides worldwide training for journalists in the area of religion. Glader is executive director of The Media Project.

RMIG member Doug Mendenhall went live Feb. 8 with dougmendenhall.com to house a weekly religion column that he’s written for almost two decades.

Mendenhall, an associate JMC professor with the title of Journalist in Residence at Abilene Christian University, began writing the column in 2000 for The Huntsville Times, an Alabama daily newspaper for which he was design editor.

Doug Mendenhall

Doug Mendenhall Mendenhall wrote the column for The Times until 2012, although in 2008 he left Alabama to join the faculty of ACU in Texas. Once there, he also wrote for the Abilene Reporter-News as well. That stopped at the end of 2019 when the Gannett paper cut all funding for freelancers.

“It was nothing personal,” Mendenhall said. “Such a common story these days. I felt worse for the other people who lost their platform than for myself. But I did want to keep writing.”

Mendenhall said he uses his columns as examples in some of his classes: Media Writing, Opinion Writing, Race & Media and Media & Religion.

The website is branded as “Jesus in the Food Court,” a reference to a collection of Mendenhall’s early work in the 2006 book How Jesus Ended Up in the Food Court.

“I’ve always liked that title, and it’s a good thing for me to keep up there as a focus for my work – thinking about how Jesus would act in the more secular or mundane settings in which we find ourselves,” he said.

The site includes an archive of Mendenhall’s columns for the past 20 years, which he uploaded individually from old Word documents. “That’s a scary and sometimes wonderful thing, to see all your work flash before your eyes like that,” he said. “I can really tell how my thinking has changed in 20 years, but I also patted myself on the back some for those early pieces.”

Pilgrim at Masjid Al Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government has restricted travel to Islam’s holiest sites. Photo by Ali Mansuri, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5

That factor ties many religions to the health crisis.

In Italy, Elisa Di Benedetto reported: “Religious services, as well as church groups and any other activities and gatherings have been suspended in several parishes of Northern Italy this week. In Milan, tourist will not be able to visit the Duomo, Milan’s Cathedral, which was closed except for personal prayer, after the Archdiocese suspended Masses beginning in the evening of Sunday until further notice.”

In Saudi Arabia, the BBC reported, “The Saudi government said it would suspend visas for Muslims seeking to visit Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia has also suspended visas for tourists from countries with confirmed cases of the virus. It is not clear when the visa restrictions will be lifted or how Ramadan and the major Hajj pilgrimage – which begins in July – will be affected.”

In South Korea, where the outbreak centered around the small Shincheonji Christian sect. NPR reported, “Critics say the disease may have spread within the church quickly because of the way that it worships. ‘Shincheonji followers hold services sitting on the floor, without any chairs,” packed together “like bean sprouts,’ says Shin Hyun-uk, director of the Guri Cult Counseling Center, an organization in Gyeonggi province that works to extract members from the church. ‘A bigger problem is that they shout out ‘amen’ after every sentence the pastor utters, pretty much every few seconds. And they do that at the top of their lungs,’ sending respiratory droplets flying everywhere, he adds. These droplets are believed to transmit the coronavirus.”

In the Holy Land, pilgrimages from South Korea for Lent could be suspended, and Roman Catholics in several dioceses ares suspending the practice of taking consecrated wine from chalices.

— Joe Grimm

Hollandsche Schouwburg is the former theater used by the Nazis as a deportation center for Jews beginning in 1942.

By Michelle Baker

What are the ethics of displaying images of brutality in the context of war and genocide? What moral issues are raised by using visual materials to publicly expose others’ victimization? These are questions journalists, photographers and scholars often grapple with, but they are questions that can also create uncertainty and conflict in museum spaces.

Such questions are now being debated at the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam as it prepares to close in 2020 to transform its current temporary and semi-permanent exhibits into a permanent exhibit scheduled to open in 2022.

The permanent exhibit will use more than 1,000 objects, documents and testimonies the museum possesses, but the question about whether to display photographs of victimization is of topmost salience to exhibit curators.

A temporary installation invites those visiting the exhibit to share their opinions about how the future museum should display—or not display—such images. Individual, private booths show photographs one at a time, and the visitor can hear the opinions of curators, historians, filmmakers and survivors as they share their opinions, often disparate, about whether the image under consideration should be displayed publicly.

Such images include a photograph taken by a Nazi doctor of a young boy whose body shows the effects of tuberculosis-related medical experiments, as well as a photograph taken by U.S. liberators of nude, emaciated men outside of a barrack at Bergen-Belsen.

Questions raised include, “How does the photograph do the subject justice?” “Is the photograph a revictimization?” “Does it serve as evidence of crimes against humanity?” “What is our moral responsibility to the victims in the photographs?” And, “Does the intention and point of view of the photographer influence the meaning of the image?”

According to its website, The National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam seeks to do “justice to the continuity of Jewish life since the war” with the purpose of distinguishing the future permanent exhibit from other Holocaust museums by placing strong emphasis on the consequences of the Holocaust on Jewish community and identity as well as the consequences for the whole of Dutch society. The museum intends to demonstrate how the Holocaust still affects the entire population of the Netherlands.

The permanent exhibit will be housed in two historic locations in the Jewish Cultural Quarter: a building that was once the Reformed Protestant Teachers College, next to the Crèche (daycare) from which 600 Jewish children were rescued, and the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former Dutch theater that, beginning in 1942, was used as a deportation center to transfer an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 Jews to the Westerbork transit camp.

In total, approximately 107,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands, primarily to Auschwitz and Sobibor, where they were murdered. This represented 75 percent of the country’s total Jewish population, the highest percentage of Jews deported from any Western European country. Approximately 30,000 Jews went into hiding throughout the Netherlands, assisted by the Dutch resistance. Two-thirds of those in hiding survived.

The Lilly Endowment announced one of the largest religion journalism grants in decades, the long-anticipated Global Religion Journalism Initiative.

The $4.9 million package will go to the Religion News Foundation for an 18-month startup phase. The collaborative will involve the Associated Press, Religion News Service and The Conversation US.

Lilly reported “The initiative will establish a coordinated strategy for reporting on religion and increase significantly the number and reach of high-quality stories about religious faith and practice and the impact of religion in the United States and around the globe.”
The grant is to support:

• A collaborative religion desk at the AP


• More reporters dedicated to religion


• Enhanced capacities to produce and distribute video through digital and social media


• A new weekly news series focused on religion and faith


• A Web-based news channel focused on religion


• Enhancement of the AP and RNS for distributing religious content

The three news organizations are to test strategies for revenue streams needed to make these efforts self-sustaining.

— Joe Grimm

Rick Clifton Moore, Boise State University

One of the invigorating aspects of studying religion and media is that there is an endless supply of subject matter. Each day new “case studies” (so to speak) avail themselves. Indeed, a rewarding element that occurs in reviewing papers for RMIG–and, of course, attending presentations at the conference–is hearing about religion/media cases that one was unaware of.

With that in mind, I thought I would use the newsletter as a place to share what I think are some of the more intriguing places where faith and mass communication interfaced within the last year. These seven are, obviously, manifestations that I was aware of, and found interesting. I’m hoping some are new and/or intriguing to you as well.

Donald Trump and Religious Belief. The average member of the public is most likely reminded very often of the strong differences of opinion that exist in regard to the U.S. President, but not the varied attitudes American religious leaders have toward him. The disparate views are especially evident (unbeknownst to many) within the American “evangelical” community, where leaders such as Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson have shown tremendous support for the chief of state, while others such as Max Lucado and Russell Moore have expressed significant doubts about him. How these various leaders have expressed themselves in the media, and how mainstream journalists have reported about the various attitudes toward the U.S. President can make for fascinating discussion.

Growth of Islam. Though it is not a single news story, and has been in development for several years, the fact that data indicate the Muslim faith may become the majority world faith this century has recently gained media traction. The Pew Research Center has been studying this for a long time, and has released numerous reports over the years. News outlets such as CNN and the BBC gave it ample coverage in 2017.

Passing of Cardinal Law. Bernard Law was a Roman Catholic priest and  a fascinating figure. He gained accolades for his courageous support of African Americans when he served in the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson Mississippi in the 1960s. Indeed, media scholars might find it fascinating that he edited a diocesan newspaper at the time and won a national award from the Catholic Press Association. Little of that is remembered, though, as he later faced ignominy for his role in covering up sexual abuse among clergy in Boston. (There is a good deal of reference to him in Tom McCarthy’s 2015 film Spotlight.) Law passed away in December and was interred at the Vatican, with little comment from the church about his role in protecting pedophiles within the priesthood.

Why Buddhism is True. Journalist/Professor Robert Wright may be known to some readers for his earlier work The Evolution of God. In 2016, he released Why Buddhism is True, which earned a high level of critical praise and (more importantly, perhaps, for scholars of media and religion) rose to the top five in the New York Times Best Sellers list. Admittedly, Wright’s vision of “Buddhism” is highly scientific and secular, tending to ignore issues such as spiritual reincarnation. Wright treats Buddhism in a rather instrumental fashion, seeing it as a technique for overcoming problems resulting from our odd evolutionary origins. A number of traditional media outlets helped promote the book’s success. NPR, for example, devoted two segments to the publication.

Family Christian Stores Shuttered. Originally founded by the Zondervan family (publishers of Bibles and Christian books), the chain eventually expanded to have outlets in 36 states. The retailer had developed a niche by attracting Christians by way of products not readily available in large chain stores. It was also critiqued for stocking its shelves with books that were theologically shallow, and for peddling home decor that acerbic detractors referred to as “Jesus junk.” Of course, a key question remains. To what extent is the shuttering of these stores related to decreasing interest in their products, and to what extent is it related to the rise of online sales of those very same products?

Jewish Community Center Bomb Threats/Rising Anti-Semitism. Early in 2017 over one hundred bomb threats were phoned into Jewish Community Centers around the U.S. In March of the year, two individuals were arrested in connection with some of these acts. A “unite the right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that included neo-Nazi elements gained national news attention, but less discussion has been devoted to the possibility of increasing anti-Jewish sentiment among western nations in general. The Guardian has reported that anti-Semitism increased significantly in 2017, citing the Community Security Trust whose data suggest such incidents were the highest since the charity began keeping records. Forbes magazine and The New York Times recently ran stories about the large number of Jews in France who are wondering if they should move to another country.

Tim Keller and Princeton Seminary. The average newsreader has no conception of who Timothy Keller is. That same individual probably only hears about “Princeton” when the university’s basketball team is in the NCAA basketball tournament bracket. Many RMIG members might be aware that Keller is a Presbyterian (Presbyterian Church in America, more specifically) pastor who developed a small 1980s “house church” into one of the most visible religious organizations in New York City, now with four congregations and total membership in the thousands.  Princeton Seminary–historically connected to, but distinct from the famed university–had announced plans to grant a major award to Keller, but received significant pushback, based on the pastor’s views on issues of gender and sexuality.  The seminary’s president, in conjunction with Keller, decided to withhold granting of the award for the year. This decision led to further protests from a different coalition. The story appears to have not received widespread national news coverage, suggesting that most of the discussion of the event took place via smaller news outlets and social media. “Google News,” where many of us start the process of determining how much coverage an event has received, shows only five entries if one searches under “Timothy Keller and Princeton.” As Google often does, it has a “View All” button below the initial list of stories. In this case, however, the button links to a page that says, “Sorry, there is no additional coverage at this time.”

These are just a few of the stories from the last year or so that I have found stimulating. Don’t hesitate to use the RMIG newsletter as an outlet for making colleagues aware of other ways in which religion and media have recently intersected.

By Michael Longinow, Biola University

To teach visual journalism in Haiti is as much about lenses, tripods and audio levels as it is about the spiritual. My colleagues and I landed in Port-Au-Prince on a Sunday morning at about 9 a.m. The shuttle taking us from the airport to our compound sped by sidewalks packed with vendors selling everything imaginable: fresh food, tires, iron-work, packaged bread, clothing, furniture. And standing out from the crowds were the church-goers: women in bright yellow or blue dresses, men in suits and ties. Some of the well-dressed were on motorcycles or in the makeshift buses comprising a small pick-up truck with a canopy. These were packed with men, women and children at all hours of the day. But this was Sunday morning, and at least a third of those in traveling mode were headed to a worship service.

We were going there to refresh these students’ grasp of shooting and editing video interviews, stand-ups, B-roll. And as we made our way to the compound where we’d live and teach for a few days, I was taken again by the contrast of spiritual atmosphere between this place and the religious worlds I navigate in the United States.

To read the research literature about Haiti one would wonder if Christianity is at all thriving in this country. Voodoo is the dominant culture of spirituality, woven into Roman Catholic traditions of icons and liturgy. Voodoo mixed with Christian awareness is in the music, in the public artwork — a kind of atmosphere that all Haitians know and live with but few can articulate to Americans with their insistence on concrete lines of socio-cultural demarcation. To most Americans, even I daresay some researchers, it’s either this or it’s this. It can’t be both (variables like that mess up the statistics and data-gathering). But it is both. It’s many things all at once. And that’s what makes it a place of fascinating socio-religious complexity.

What I learned, upon returning from Haiti after our fourth trip, was that I know less now about socio-religious experience — and the pedagogies necessary to navigate it — than when I began talking with these Haitian students about visual journalism done with an ethical perspective. In August, I’ll be returning to Haiti to do a capstone course in ethics with them, and the teaching will be a challenge. Media ethics is familiar to me. But I don’t speak Creole.

That’s been a barrier since Day 1, but the longer I’m with these students, the more I see the language barrier is deeper than just using the correct words. Even if I found those words, I’m a half-Mexican, half-Ukrainian male who grew up in greater Chicago and now teach in Southern California. I don’t get what it means to be Haitian. I don’t know poverty like these students do — or what that poverty feels like juxtaposed with the wealth of some in Haiti. I don’t know the ways that faith and spiritual experience live out in the daily experience of the women carrying massive loads on their heads, the crowds of young men huddled around small motorcycles near alleyways, or the little children lifting one side of heavy crates being hoisted onto battered trucks. This is a country whose belief systems trace back centuries mixing traditions of other countries on other continents. Haitians are aware of spirits and spiritual influence in ways we in the U.S. are not — or have awareness of only rarely. They fear, for good reason, the evil personified that stalks the darkness around them. And some have an awareness of God, even an experience with God, that makes them courageous in their faith.

What I have learned most from my experiences with Haiti is that when I take students there, I must take them slowly, guiding them into the socio-religious encounters in ways that respect the people and the complex richness of their faith traditions. To be reductive, to be in a hurry about this, is to defeat the purpose of going at all.

The Internet and New Communication Dynamics among Diasporic Muslims: Opportunities, Challenges, and Paradoxes

By Sahar Khamis, Ph.D.

University of Maryland, College Park

The chapter titled “The Internet and New Communication Dynamics among Diasporic Muslims: Opportunities, Challenges, and Paradoxes,” was authored by Prof. Sahar Khamis, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, and published in the book “European Muslims and New Media,” edited by Merve Kayikci and Leen d’Haenens and published by Leuven University Press in 2017.

In this chapter, Khamis argues that the expansion of new diasporic Muslim communities in many parts of the world, especially in the West, is paralleled by the simultaneous explosion in new media technologies. These two complex and mutual processes imposed new realities and invited new communication dynamics, in the political, social and cultural domains simultaneously. They also created a number of unprecedented opportunities, challenges, and paradoxes, which are worth exploring in details.

This chapter sheds light on some of the opportunities which the expansion of new media technologies, especially the internet, has enabled among diasporic Muslim communities, such as opening new avenues for members of these communities to establish better and stronger links with both their communities of origin back home, as well as their new communities in the diaspora, in addition to opening new windows through which they can better see the rest of the world, while allowing the rest of the world to better see them, at the same time.

It also discusses some of the challenges and paradoxes which the introduction of the internet invited among these diasporic Muslim communities, such as the question of religious authority or obtaining authoritative religious knowledge in the age of the internet, the possibility of being exposed to extremist or radical ideas through the internet, in addition to the tensions between diversity and cohesion; hegemony and resistance; religiosity and secularization; and globalization and localization.

The chapter complicates the discussion of all of these issues, arguing that it is, indeed, at the intersection of all of these diametrically opposed binaries that new, hybrid, and, indeed, eclectic Muslim identities are born. At the heart of this discussion, Khamis makes the argument that new media tools and technologies, especially digitally-enabled modes of communication via the internet, are both mirrors and molders, or reflectors and shapers, of these new eclectic Muslim identities, with all their complexities, ambivalences, and nuances, which manifest themselves in numerous ways, both online and offline, in this modern age.

Keywords: Internet; social media; diasporic Muslim communities; Virtual Umma; globalization

The Religion and Media Interest Group (RMIG) of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is proud to present its officers for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Head: Rick Moore, Boise State University

Rick Moore earned his doctorate from the University of Oregon and has taught at Boise State since 1994. He loves teaching a wide variety of courses in mass communication, both in media practice and in media criticism (including law/ethics).

Dr. Moore’s research interests are in the area of mass communication and ideology. Much of his writing has investigated media portrayal of religious and environmental issues. Writing under his full name of Rick Clifton Moore, Dr. Moore has published articles in: The Journal of Communication; Mass Communication & Society; The Journal of Media and Religion; The Journal of Communication and Religion; The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture; The Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society; Advertising and Society Review; The Communication Review; The Ellul Forum; and The Journal for Peace and Justice Studies.

When not in his office, in the classroom, or the library, Rick enjoys spending time with his wife Kim and his children Emily and Danny. He also has a fondness for old houses (the Moore’s version being a perpetual work-in-progress) and occasionally gets to spend time wading in Idaho’s beautiful mountain streams.

Co-Vice Head: Mariam Alkazemi , Gulf University for Science and Technology

Mariam Alkazemi (Ph.D., 2014, University of Florida) is currently a Carnegie fellow at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill while on leave from an assistant professorship of mass communication at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. Her research appears in Communication Law & Policy, International Communication Gazette, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Religion, Media & Digital Culture, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism and Health Environments Research & Design Journal. Dr. Alkazemi has been a recipient of several awards for teaching and research. Further, she has served as a research fellow the London School of Economics in the summer of 2016. Dr. Alkazemi holds degrees from George Washington University (B.A., 2007, Journalism) and Michigan State University (M.A., 2009, Advertising/Public Relations). Dr. Alkazemi has taugh

t a wide range of graduate, undergraduate and online classes dealing with international communication, information gathering, public speaking, public relations and advertising. She is currently serving as a co-vice head of the Religion and Media Interest Group, which is affiliated with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
· ·
Co-Vice Head: Greg Perreault, Appalachian State University

Gregory P. Perreault (Ph.D., University of Missouri) is an assistant professor of multimedia journalism at Appalachian State University. His research focuses on journalism studies and media paradigms. His research has explored embedded values in journalistic content, paradigm maintenance activity among journalists, how paradigmatic values have shaped minority representations, and how social media audiences shape media narratives. His papers have won awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. His research appears in the Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, Howard Journal of Communication, Journal of Media & Religion, Journalism Studies, Games & Culture, and Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies. Prior to entering academia, he worked as a journalist for seven years. He’s worked as a sports reporter for the Palm Beach Post (circ. 145, 000), served as managing editor of a hyperlocal multimedia website Columbia Faith & Values, and had work published at USA Today, Miami Herald, and The Los Angeles Times. He earned his masters degree in Communication, Culture and Technology from Georgetown University. He graduated with honors from the Missouri School of Journalism. Perreault serves as co-vice head for the Religion and Media Interest Group.

Research Chair: Brian J. Bowe, Western Washington University

Brian J. Bowe (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an assistant professor in Western Washington University’s Department of Journalism. His research focuses on the connections between media and culture in a variety of contexts. His research specialties include framing, agenda setting, and media coverage of Islam. He has taught at Michigan State University, the Sorbonne, and Grand Valley State University. His research has been published in journals such as Media, Culture and Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Public Understanding of Science. A noted music journalist, Bowe has written biographies of The Ramones, The Clash, and Judas Priest. He co-edited the anthology CREEM: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine (2007, Collins).

PF&R Chair: Michael Longinow, Biola University

Michael Longinow, a former RMIG head, is a former chair in the Department of Media, Journalism & Pubic Relations in the School of Fine Arts & Communication at Biola University in Los Angeles County, California. His teaching areas are convergent journalism writing, reporting, and philosophy and ethics. He has made cross-cultural understanding, particularly between faith communities, an underlying theme of his pedagogy in all courses. His recent research areas have been trauma in journalism and the role of Millennials in trends facing the media industries in the U.S. and internationally. He taught English and Journalism previously at Asbury University in Central Kentucky. He grew up in greater Chicago where, in a mixed ethnicity home, he learned the interplay of Slavic and Latino groups in their faith practices, media and cultures. His undergraduate degree from Wheaton College (IL) led to a MS in journalism from the University of Illinois (Urbana). His Ph.D from the University of Kentucky focused on the role of media (print and broadcast) in the growth and development of Christian liberal arts colleges and universities in the U.S. (1888-1942).

Teaching Chair: Vicki Knasel Brown, University of Missouri

Newsletter and Social Media Editor: Andrew Pritchard, Iowa State University

Andrew D. Pritchard is an assistant professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, where his principal teaching area is media law, regulation, and policy. He is a lawyer and former journalist, with research interests in media law, media history, and how individuals in modern societies use media to shape their own religious experiences. He received his B.A. in political science and his J.D. from the University of Minnesota, and his Ph.D. in communication from North Dakota State University. His research has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Communication and Religion, Historical Methods, and Visual Communication Quarterly.

To share content for the newsletter and/or social media, please contact Andrew at aprtich[at]iastate[dot]edu.

Membership Chair: Cecile Holmes, University of South Carolina

RMIG’s best goes out to Professor Daniel Stout in Hawaii. He’s had some health issues last semester, but has told RMIG officers that he’s back in the classroom. In March, he delivered a distinguished university lecture on “Tendencies and Tensions of Interpretative Communities.”

Debra Mason

By Tiffany McCallen
Religion News Service
Used by permission

I was a barely 18 when I first met Debra Mason in a cramped study room in the library at Otterbein College in quaint Westerville, Ohio. Having never stepped foot on the campus I’d chosen to pursue my degree in journalism, she was my first impression of the professors and instructors I would meet who would shape my four-year journey there.

I soon learned I would get to know her well; she taught most of the journalism courses in the communication department and she also advised the Tan & Cardinal student newspaper for which I would later serve as editor.

As we pored over the course catalog together to choose my freshman year classes, I had no way of knowing then that Debra would would serve as my mentor, and later my boss, for the next 20 years.

It’s funny how fate works.

In 1996 Debra became RNA’s first part-time executive director, taking the nearly 50-year-old membership association from a largely volunteer operation and housing it in her spare bedroom, where each Friday she would process membership dues, collect contest entries and help plan the annual conference.

By the year 2000, under Mason’s leadership the association had created a charitable foundation and it, in turn, had accepted its first major grant. It also happened to be the year I graduated and the year Debra offered me a job.

We were the original “Women of Westerville” — a moniker coined by board members that later included development directors, business managers, administrative assistants and a revolving door of interns. By the mid 2000s (and just before the recession hit in late 2007), our staff had bloomed to its largest numbers, buoyed by an abundance of grant funding for religion and public life projects.

Our work was bountiful:

• The RNA Annual Conference attendance topped 300 for the first time.
• We awarded between $43,000 and $93,000 in Lilly Scholarships in Religion money each year for journalists to take college religion courses.
• We held dozens of brown bag training sessions in newsrooms across the country.
• ReligionLink’s story idea and vetted source service grew by thousands of database entries and story ideas and contributed to countless news reports.
• RNA contest categories were expanding for media of all types, including the creation of the Chandler Award for student religion reporting.
• The foundation created an annual silent auction to raise money for conference scholarships, and it successfully held several matching grant drives to further our cause.

And later, when our offices moved to the University of Missouri, the prolific work continued as the foundation acquired Religion News Service following Newhouse’s decision to end its funding; when we held overseas training on religious/press freedom and countering hate speech; when student RNA Chapters sprouted; and when we created the Handa Fellowships in Interreligious Communication last year.

We’ve been fortunate to have had engaged and patient officers and board members, then and now, who encouraged and supported the work of our organization, and who have spent many, many hours in the trenches of management, committee leadership and strategic planning.

But there hasn’t been a single person in the history of Religion News Association and Foundation who has spent more time championing and furthering the work of religion reporters than Debra Mason.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to have had a front-row seat to seeing her translate a fiery passion for informed, accurate religion reporting into usable tools, resources and training for journalists around the world.

I have learned much from her in the last two decades, and there is much for which I am thankful. She taught me there’s a time to tell it like it is and there’s a time for compassion, which she extended to me and to our staff countless times over the years. And despite her workaholic tendencies, I credit her with steering me toward a work-life balance that put motherhood at the forefront while still allowing me the room to grow the professional skills and talents that have come to serve me well in my role.

In a farewell speech at the 2015 RNA Annual Conference in Philadelphia — Debra’s last as RNA’s Executive Director — former RNA President Kevin Eckstrom referred to her as our organization’s North Star.

Indeed, when I came back to the office on Jan. 3 following a holiday break — my first official workday without Debra overseeing the foundation in some way — it felt different without that familiar light.

But I know that Debra remains our biggest fan. She has no intention of slowing down her support of religion reporting, and she’ll be loudly cheering on the work of our members that will be produced at what appears to be a breakneck pace this year.

RNF’s new CEO Tom Gallagher is eager to fill her shoes in carrying out our mission to equip journalists with the tools they need to cover religion with balance and accuracy, and to elevate the public discourse on religion.

As for me, along with my treasured colleagues, I plan to enjoy my 17th year helping to grow our membership, shining light on award-winning religion coverage, planning an educational and entertaining conference and simply being there in any way I can for the more than 500 members who call RNA home.

It is my hope that as Debra watches from her post at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, we’ll make her proud.

In God We Trust, with God We Fight. Religion in U.S. Presidential War Rhetoric: From Johnson to Obama

In times of war, religion features prominently in U.S. presidential rhetoric. It may be used to strengthen courage and hope or to serve as a powerful tool for accepting sacrifices and losses. In this article we examine the speeches of five presidents given specifically in periods of war: Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Then we analyze variations in the volume and type of religious content among these presidents; we use a textual content analysis methodology to study a representative sample of speeches given by the above-mentioned presidents in time of war. We conclude that U.S. presidents try to persuade the audience that the country is going to war to accomplish God’s will. Under this light, religious rhetoric appears to have a higher correlation with the enemy being fought than with the personal convictions of each president.

Religion and New Media: A Uses and Gratifications Approach

This research examines specific relationships between new media and religion. While prior research has focused on the question of whether a relationship exists, we explore technology usage as a predictor of specific religious behavior. Using a sample (N = 423) comprising a cross-section of religious and cultural backgrounds, results indicate that attitudes toward technology and use of social media contribute to how people view religion as a mechanism for meeting needs. Applying uses and gratifications theory in a unique way, three needs related to religion emerged: religion as a means of passing time, religion as a mode of meeting self needs, and religion as a catalyst for learning. We discuss implications of our findings.

The Medium Is the Danger: Discourse about Television among Amish and Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Women

Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar

This study shows how Old Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox women’s discourse about television can help develop a better understanding of the creation, construction, and strengthening of limits and boundaries separating enclave cultures from the world. Based on questionnaires containing both closed- and open-ended questions completed by 82 participants, approximately half from each community, I argue that both communities can be understood as interpretive communities that negatively interpret not only television content, like other religious communities, but also the medium itself. Their various negative interpretive strategies is discussed and the article shows how they are part of an “us-versus-them” attitude created to mark the boundaries and walls that enclave cultures build around themselves. The comparison between the two communities found only a few small differences but one marked similarity: The communities perceive avoidance of a tool for communication, in this case television, as part of the communities’ sharing, participation, and common culture.

Chicago offers a host of attractions for people with different interests.

The RMIG interest group will be taking a tour of sacred spaces in Chicago.  Please click here for more information.

This New York Times “36 Hours in Chicago” article recommends various music venues for the blues in addition to various restaurants and bars.

This website highlights the museums in Chicago, providing options for people who would enjoy contemporary art or an aquarium among other options.

There is also a host of sporting events, and more information about these recreational activities can be found here.

We hope that those attending the conference can find ways to enjoy being in Chicago!

By: Joel J. Campbell

As we look toward 2017, the best way to celebrate the work of the Religion and Media Interest Group is to honor our members’ accomplishments. Here’s a sampling of some of their accomplishments. If you know of other RMIG member news, please forward me a note and I’ll get it in the next newsletter.

New publication

Congrats to Brian J. Bowe (Western Washington) and Jennifer Hoewe (Alabama) for their publication in Winter 2016 Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Night and Day: An Illustration of Framing and Moral Foundation in the Oklahoma Shariah Amendment Campaign.

http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/93/4/967.full

Blogging about media and Mormons

Past RMIG Dan Stout (BYU-Hawaii) has started a fascinating venture with a “digizine” entitled Mormonsintomedia.com. The digizine’s subtitle says it’s a “thoughtful review of contemporary movies, books, TV, music and more. In a recent entry, Dan takes his unique vantage point from Hawaii where Pacific Islanders weigh in about the cultural accuracy in the new Disney movie “Moana.” One source cited the movie’s omission of a heroic goddess and the reduction of the mighty god Maui to “a one-dimensional selfish borderline abusive buffon.” Read more at https://mormonsintomedia.com

Mormon Media Studies Conference in Hawaii

Speaking of Dan, he and former RMIG head Chiung Hwang Chen hosted the third Mormon Media Studies Symposium in November. This one was held at BYU-Hawaii in Laie. John Durham Peters, the A. Craig Baird Professor of the Department of Communications Studies at the University of Iowa, was the keynote speaker. Paper presentation topics ranged from making of the “Mormon Moment” to “media representations of gender, sexuality and race and the future of the Mormon faith.” To see the program, click here: http://mormonmediastudies.weebly.com/program-information.html

Very busy in Mass.

Shaheen Pasha (University of Massachusetts Amherst) has been very busy. Here’s some of her recent accomplishments:

— AEJMC Annual Conference (August 2016): Invited to present “Pakistan’s Silent War Against Journalists” at pre-conference workshop panel entitled The Shrinking Public Sphere: Growing Restrictions on Press Freedom in South Asia and South-East Asia

— SPJ Excellence in Journalism Conference (September 2016): Invited as speaker/trainer for “Covering Islam” workshop breakout session. Link to podcast: https://islamforjournalists.wordpress.com/eij-conference/–

–Poynter/Kent State Media Ethics Workshop (September 2016): Invited to speak on panel entitled “Media and Safe Spaces on College Campuses. Link to panel:http://mediaethics.jmc.kent.edu/archive.php

— New England Public Radio (November 2016): Invited to voice personal commentary on U.S. presidential elections and children Link: http://nepr.net/news/2016/11/04/115253/

— ARTICLE: By boycotting Iran over hijab, the U.S. chess player wastes a valuable opportunity

URL: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/10/19/boycotting-iran-hijab-us-chess-player-wastes-valuable-opportunity

— ARTICLE: Trump won, and now my teenage daughter wishes she were white

URL: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/15/trump-won-now-teenage-daughter-wishes-white

An expert among us

Current RMIG officer Debra Mason (Missouri) was invited by the Newseum’s Religious Freedom Center to teach a Media and Religion course in Fall 2016 as part of the new program to educate religious leaders, scholars and journalists about Religious Freedom and Human Rights. The Center is accepting applications through Dec. 15. http://www.religiousfreedomcenter.org/

New issue of Journal of Media and Religion

The latest issue of the Journal of Media and Religion is out. Here’s the articles:

— Third-Person Effect, Religiosity and Support for Censorship of Satirical Religious Cartoons

 Larry Webster, Jo-Yun Li, Yicheng Zhu, Alex Luchsinger, Anan Wan and Mark Tatge (South Carolina),

—Consumers’ Insights About Spirituality in Advertising

Galit Marmor-Lavie and Patricia A. Stout (University of Texas-Austin)

— Coverage of Christianity in South Korea, 1996–2005

Taisik Hwang (Georgia)

— “I Pray We Won’t Let This Moment Pass Us By”: Christian Concert Films and Numinous Experiences

 Jim Y. Trammell (High Point)

Here’s a link to the issue:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hjmr20/15/4?nav=tocList

RMIG members Brian J. Bowe (Western Washington University) and Jennifer Hoewe (The University of Alabama) recently published a study titled “Night and Day: An Illustration of Framing and Moral Foundations in the Oklahoma Shariah Amendment Campaign” in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

When Oklahoma’s “Save our State” amendment was passed, Oklahoma voters decided that the Islamic Shariah moral code could not be used in courtroom rulings. Though the amendment was eventually overturned in higher courts, the repercussions were felt and expressed across the state, particularly in the opinion pages of Oklahoma’s newspapers. To understand these responses to the amendment, Bowe and Hoewe examined the moral arguments made in letters to the editor.

Using Moral Foundations Theory to guide a cluster analysis of the frames used in these letters, the study unveiled three frames. First, the Patriot frame emphasized the harms surrounding Shariah, and it was only found in letters in favor of banning Shariah. Second, the Heritage frame focused on loyalty and commitment to the American way, again only appearing in letters favoring the ban. Third, the Golden Rule frame was used by letter writers against the amendment, and this frame promoted the equal treatment of Muslims.

The emergence of these frames surrounding a discussion of Shariah illustrated individuals’ reliance on moral arguments to shape their opinions. However, the content analysis showed that individuals who supported the ban of Shariah in Oklahoma were more likely to frame their arguments using morally-motivated language.

By: Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Department of Journalism and Integrated Media
Biola University

Teaching thrives on predictability: clear syllabi, thorough rubrics, links to good parallel documents.

But even in a good semester, you know to watch for danger signs — like fear and worry in students’ eyes. An anxious classroom slows everything down. And the aftershocks of Election 2016 have created fear on college and university campuses in ways we haven’t seen in decades. It’s not just our students who are uneasy. We’re as troubled as they are.

The primaries, the debates, the election cycle, election night — all of it created uncertainty for us as educators of media, journalism and communications about religion in public life. National news media got their predictions wrong in epic proportions. Christians have been, and still are divided about support for a Trump presidency. Muslims who feared a Trump presidency could happen are afraid in new ways. A post-election wave of hate incidents, though eventually denounced by Trump, has affected our students in ways we can’t ignore.

We lament the fear. But like anything, it has a flip side: it’s the beginning of teaching we could not otherwise do. Below is a short-list that might help you in the classroom in coming months.

—Teach by numbers. Data really matters when approaching faith, religious motivation and action — and it’s easy to get it wrong. Your students are attentive to religion within data now in ways they weren’t when faith at street level was merely a concept. Who claims to be Christian? How do Muslims vote? Is hate crime mostly elsewhere? Some, by hard personal experience, know perhaps for the first time what data collectors know: that numbers on hate incidents are probably understated. Build numeracy into your teaching, maybe with help from statistics faculty. Religion data is available: use it to help students craft good (or just better) questions.

—Talking is learning. Each of your sections and courses is a unique chemistry. No syllabus can bring effective learning to every type of student with the baggage each brings to the learning experience. Truth be told, many students don’t know who they are or what they think about religion in an unfolding 2017. Hate, in any context including religion, scares them. This link from a Ball State University project brings in some ideas, but the point is to get students talking about it — to each other, in groups, in panels that dialogue about issues, and in ways that get at their feelings about faith, fear, and the ambiguities of belief.

—Let students’ media be their listening device. Students are never so facile with the tools we’ve taught them as when they’re passionate. Put aside quizzes and tests and emphasize projects that allow your students to find the stories of fear and anxiety (or confidence) among people of faith in their worlds. What they find might impress learning on them in ways neither they, nor you, had anticipated. This professor used that approach on the day after the election.

It helped the students, but helped the professor as well.

The American Academy of Religion has created Reading Religion, a collection of reviews and discussion of recently published books on a variety of subjects in the scholarship of religion. Reviews are sorted by date or topic, and books available for review also are listed.

American Academy of Religion conferences. Four regional conferences of the American Academy of Religion invite paper submissions with upcoming deadlines.

• Western region (deadline Sept. 30). Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to the appropriate unit chair, listed at http://www.aarwr.com/call-for-papers.html. The conference theme is “Religion, Race, and Racism.” It will be held March 10-12, 2017, in Los Angeles.
• Southeast region (deadline Oct. 1). Proposals should be submitted through a Google Docs link and emailed to the appropriate section chair. Links and contact information is available at http://secsor.org/uncategorized/2017-call-for-papers-available. The conference theme is “Utopia and Dystopia.” It will be held March 3-5, 2017, in Raleigh, N.C.
• Southwest region (deadline Oct. 15). Proposals should be submitted to the section contacts listed at http://aar-sw.org/call-for-papers/, and papers may be submitted to more than one section. The conference theme is “Religion Matters.” It will be held March 10-12, 2017, in Irving, Texas.
• Upper Midwest region (deadline Jan. 6). Proposals for papers to be presented at a joint conference with the Society of Biblical Literature may be submitted beginning Sept. 30. Proposals should be submitted through the region’s website at http://www.umw-aarsbl.org/. The conference will be held March 31 to April 1, 2017, in St. Paul, Minn. A complete call is available at https://www.aarweb.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Membership/Regions/UpperMidwest/2017 CALL FOR PAPERS UMAAR .pdf

Seventh International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society. Proposals for papers, workshops, posters, or colloquia are invited for a conference to be held April 17-18, 2017, at Imperial College London. The conference theme is “Respecting Difference, Understanding Globalism.” Submission should address one of these topics:

• Religious Foundations
• Religious Community and Socialization
• Religious Commonalities and Differences
• The Politics of Religion

A complete call is available at http://religioninsociety.com/2017-conference/call-for-papers.

 The Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy 2017. Abstracts should be submitted by Nov. 15 for this conference, to be held March 22 to March 25 in Kobe, Japan. Full papers must be submitted by April 25. Proposals are invited for traditional paper or poster presentations, virtual presentations, workshops, or panels. A complete call is available at http://iafor.org/acerp2017-call-for-papers/.

National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion. The National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion invites paper proposals in any area pertaining to scholarship in religion for its annual meeting, to be held May 22-24, 2017, in Nashville, Tenn.  In an effort to develop innovative conversations among scholars, papers which create integration between traditional disciplines or broaden the margins of disciplinary conversations are encouraged.   Although many NABPR members work primarily in the traditional disciplines of Biblical Studies, Church History, Theology, etc., proposals are encouraged from any field, including Ministry Studies. Paper or panel proposals on any aspect of pedagogy related to the teaching of Religion are encouraged. Proposals must be received by January 15, 2017.  Send a 300-word abstract to Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed, 6210 Bresslyn Road, Nashville, TN 37205, eileen.campbellreed@gmail.com. Papers will be scheduled into a 30 minute time period, including discussion. Graduate Students are encouraged to submit proposals. More information is available at http://nabpr.org/cfp-2017-nabpr-annual-meeting/.

Yearbook of International Religious Demography. The Yearbook of International Religious Demography presents an annual snapshot of the state of religious statistics around the world. Every year large amounts of data are collected through censuses, surveys, polls, religious communities, scholars, and a host of other sources. These data are collated and analyzed by research centers and scholars around the world. Large amounts of data appear in analyzed form in the World Religion Database (Brill), aiming at a researcher’s audience. The Yearbook presents data in sets of tables and scholarly articles spanning social science, demography, history, and geography. Each issue offers findings, sources, methods, and implications surrounding international religious demography. Each year an assessment is made of new data made available since the previous issue of the yearbook. Email submission ideas for the 2017 edition to Gina Zurlo, gzurlo@bu.edu, or visit http://theweeklynumber.com/weekly-number-blog/call-for-papers-international-religious-demography.

International Society for Intellectual History. Paper and panels proposals are due by Dec. 31 for the 2017 Conference of the International Society for Intellectual History. The conference theme is “The Rethinking of Religious Belief in the Making of Modernity.” It will be held from May 30 to June 1, 2017, at the American University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. For more information, please contact the convenor, Diego Lucci, at dlucci@aubg.edu, or go to http://isih.history.ox.ac.uk/?page_id=5093.

Center for Islamic Studies. The Center for Islamic Studies welcomes abstracts for paper presentations at its national conference in Dallas. Topics include, but are not limited to, religion, role of women in society, social issues, the arts, medical practices, beliefs, education, and more. Participants are also welcome to schedule panel discussions. All papers presentations will be scheduled for 25 or 45 minutes. An abstract of the paper should designate the amount of time required for presentation. Abstracts should be submitted by Nov 5. This conference is being co-sponsored by the National Association of African American Studies & Affiliates. More information is available at http://www.naaas.org/.

Faculty positions. Calls for faculty applications are open for:

• Regis University, Denver: assistant professor with emphasis on interfaith and interreligious studies
• Claremont (Calif.) Graduate University: Dr. Margo L. Goldsmith Professorship in Women’s Studies in Religion
• Harvard Divinity School: research associate and visiting faculty working on book-length projects in religion and gender
• University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Wash.: assistant professor, half time in religious studies (Islam) and half time in gender and queer studies
• Boston University: associate or full professor with emphasis on any aspect of African diaspora religions
• Centre College, Danville, Ky.: assistant professor with emphasis on Eastern religions or new religious movements in contemporary America
• Griffith University, Nathan, Australia: lecturer with emphasis on Islam and society
• Princeton University: associate or full professor with emphasis on religion, ethics, and politics
• Amherst (Mass.) College: assistant professor with emphasis on religion in the Americas
• Denison University, Granville, Ohio: assistant professor with emphasis on U.S. religious diversity and pluralism
• University of Minnesota, Minneapolis: assistant professor with emphasis on Muslims in America

The Religion and Media Interest Group (RMIG) proudly presents the 2016-2017 officer list.

RMIG Head — Joel Campbell

Dr. Joel Campbell is an associate professor in journalism in Brigham Young University Department of Communications. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio State University. Previously, he worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter and editor for newspapers in Salt Lake City. He teaches media writing, journalism principles, media and religion, media ethics and research courses. His new-found research interest is media and religion, but has also been active in First Amendment and Freedom of Information research and advocacy. He has presented or published papers on media coverage of the Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, Artemus Ward’s 19th Century “Among the Mormons” show, media coverage of Mormons’ posthumous baptism of Jews, “The Mormon” newspaper in New York City from 1850-1857, and Marie Ogden’s New Age “Home of Truth” colony in southeast Utah.

RMIG Vice Head —  Rick Moore

Rick Clifton Moore is a professor in the Department of Communication at Boise State University. He holds a B.A. from Pepperdine University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Oregon. He teaches a variety of classes in the area of mass media writing, production, and criticism, especially classes focusing on legal/ethical dimensions of media and media’s role in democratic culture. At the university level, he teaches a class for freshmen on the role of religious thought in the development of western culture. His research mostly relates to mass media portrayal of religion, especially ideological and hegemonic aspects of those portrayals.

RMIG Professional Freedom & Responsibility  — Greg Perreault

Dr. Gregory P. Perreault serves an assistant professor of multimedia journalism at Appalachian State University. He has a Ph.D. in Journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism, an M.A. in Communication, Culture, Technology from Georgetown University and a B.A. in News and Information from Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Research – Debra Mason

Debra Mason is among the leading scholars and trainers of how religion is portrayed in the media. She brings more than 30 years of professional and scholarly experience to her position as director of the Center on Religion and the Professions, an interdisciplinary center at the world-renown Missouri School of Journalism working to improve the religious literacy of professionals so they can better serve a multi-faith public. Since 1997, she’s also directed Religion Newswriters Association, a professional association of journalists writing about religion in the mass media. She is publisher emeritus of Religion News Service (RNS), the world’s only non-sectarian wire service exclusively covering religion.

Teaching  — Michael Longinow, Brian Bowe

Dr. Michael Longinow, originally from Chicago, is  one of the founders of the Department of Journalism & Integrated Media at Biola University in La Mirada, California. After award-winning newspaper reporting in Illinois and Georgia, he began teaching journalism in 1989 at Asbury University in Kentucky, where he developed specialties in cross-cultural media, interactivity of religion and media, and the connections between journalism’s past and its future.  He has been a campus newspaper adviser from his first days in academia. He earned a B.A. at Wheaton College (IL) in political science and a M.S. in news-editorial journalism from the University of Illinois. His Ph.D from the University of Kentucky involved dissertation research on the interplay of Christian media, higher education and cultural change between 1888-1942. Since entering academia, Longinow has been a newspaper columnist and writer for national and regional magazines, academic journals, and scholarly anthologies. He and his wife live in Yorba Linda.

Brian J. Bowe (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor in Western Washington University’s Department of Journalism. He researches the connections between media and culture in multiple contexts. His work focuses on framing, agenda setting, and media coverage of Islam. He has taught at Michigan State University, the Sorbonne University, and Grand Valley State University. His research has been published in journals such as Media, Culture and Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Public Understanding of Science and International Communication Gazette. With a background in music journalism, he has written several books, including biographies of bands The Ramones, The Clash, and Judas Priest. He co-edited the anthology CREEM: America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine (Harper/Collins).

Newsletter – Andrew Pritchard, Mariam Alkazemi

Andrew D. Pritchard is an assistant professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, where his principal teaching area is media law, regulation, and policy. He is a lawyer and former journalist, with research interests in media law, media history, and how individuals in modern societies use media to shape their own religious experiences. He received his B.A. in political science and his J.D. from the University of Minnesota, and his Ph.D. in communication from North Dakota State University. His research has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Communication and Religion, Historical Methods, and Visual Communication Quarterly.

Mariam Alkazemi is an assistant professor of mass communication at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, where she teaches courses in public speaking, public relations and advertising. In the summer of 2016, Dr. Alkazemi served as a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Centre. She completed her Ph.D. in Mass Communication at University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communication, where she focused on media effects research.  She is interested in media effects as applied to religion, and is also interested in examining routine factors impacting the media industry.  Her research appears in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Religion, Media & Digital Culture, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism and Health Environments Research & Design Journal.

MINNEAPOLIS — The Twin Cities are home to unique collection of houses of worship, but shifting demographics and influx of immigrants are reshaping the religious landscape of the metro area.

A pre-conference tour hosted by the Religion and Media Interest Group offered a glimpse of these changes as well as a look back at the area’s religious history. Packed in a 12-passenger, participants viewed on of the largest Hindu temples in the United States, a Beaux Arts Catholic treasure, a growing inner-city Muslim religious center, and an historic Episcopal cathedral.

The daylong tour started at one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States in Maple Grove, a Minneapolis suburb. To be correct, the single structure houses many Hindu “temples” devoted to separate deities and has a large central tower created by artists from India. It’s rural juxtaposition to nearby farmhouses and corn fields surprised observers.

Next the group paid homage to Jewish culture by visiting the famous Cecil’s Deli in St. Paul serving a long menu of traditional deli cuisine including matzo ball soup, kosher meat, latkes, Reubens, bagels and unique breads.

Next up was the Cathedral of St. Paul, which is also known as the National Shrine of the Apostle Paul. The cathedral is unique because of its ornate Beaux Arts styling.   At the Cathedral, RMIG “tourists” also had a question and answer session with the communications director for the Archdiocese and communications director of the cathedral. The archdiocese has recently been embroiled in settlings priest sex abuse claims that resulted in bankruptcy of the archdiocese.

The next sacred space hearkened to a Catholic heritage in inner-city St. Paul, but dwindling Catholic numbers force the church to sell the parish church and adjacent school. Now a diverse and growing Muslim population have remade the old church into a mosque and religious center.  Where pews once lined the sanctuary, an expansive piece of carpet, with two layers of padding for kneeling adherents, is the site for daily prayers and other worship services. The center serves a mix of Somali and Bosnia Muslims, most of them immigrants. Conversation about the influence of ISIS on local teens was one of the topics raised during the visit as well as statements about Muslim immigrants by Donald Trump, GOP presidential candidate.

The group travelled back to Minneapolis and to St. Mark’s Cathedral. The Episcopal cathedral dates its beginnings to 1858 and its current Gothic-inspired home was built in 1910. Group members listened intently as a docent lead them on a tour of the sanctuary and then to basement which houses a mausoleum with both marked vaults for ashes of the dead and a common vault for those who want to share a common grave with the ashes of many.

On Wednesday, August 3rd, the Religion and Media Interest Group (RMIG) has organized a pre-conference tour to visit sacred spaces in the Twin Cities.

The inclusion of at least three sacred spaces has been confirmed.  These sites include:

• Hindu Temple of Minnesota, which is the largest Hindu Temple in the state of Minnesota.  For more information about the temple, please visit https://www.hindumandirmn.org/.

• The Cathedral of St. Paul. National Shrine of the Apostle Paul in St. Paul, which is one of the best known cathedral in the twin cities. For more information about the cathedral, please visit: https://www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/.

• St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, a remarkable cathedral in
  downtown Minneapolis. For more information about this cathedral, please visit http://ourcathedral.org/.

Although unconfirmed, the RMIG team plans to include two other places.  These sites include:

• Karmel Square Mosque, the largest mosque in the area serving the  Somali community. It is located in large Somali-focused shopping mall.
• Pilgrim Baptist Church, the oldest African-American church in the twin cities.

For any questions, please feel free contact Joel Campbell, Assistant Professor of Journalism at Brigham Young University. You can reach him by e-mail at foiguy[at]gmail[dot]com or by Twitter @joelcampbell.

Conferences. Registration for the Summer Session  Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies (1, 2 & 3 August) is now open. The meeting will be held at The Old Library in the Oxford University Church of St Mary. Constructed in 1320, The Old Library is the first university (as opposed to college) building in Oxford and therefore uniquely important; this is where the nascent University began. They are also accepting abstract submissions for our 5–7 December 2016 session. You are invited to present a paper on an aspect of religious studies, or you may wish to attend as an observer. The symposium is inter-disciplinary and has a broad-based theme. For more information, please visit: http://www.oxfordsymposiumonreligiousstudies.com/.

Call for Papers. The Journal of Communication and Religion publishes original articles that advance theory and research about communication in religious contexts. Articles are expected to use rigorous theory and methodology to develop insightful arguments that further knowledge, understanding, and care about the intersections of communication and religion. The journal accepts articles dealing with communication within the purview of any religion. Manuscripts should show strong scholarship, exemplary in its research type (either quantitative or qualitative). Writing should be clear, aesthetically pleasing, and effective. Its style should be gender-sensitive. At best, articles will contribute to the stock of knowledge in communication and religion, offering insights that can lead to positive religious, social, and cultural change. Each article is blind-reviewed by two members of the editorial board and/or readers, as well as the editor. Suggestions for revision will keep issues of argument, style, and contribution to the area of communication and religion in mind. The editor makes final publication decisions.  For more information, please see http://www.relcomm.org/journal-of-communication-and-religion.html.

Call for Papers. The Journal of Christian Teaching Practice (http://www.theccsn.com/journal-of-christian-teaching-practice/) publishes original work focusing on pedagogical examples and teaching strategies that demonstrate the integration of Christian faith with collegiate instruction in private and public institutions. Submissions should discuss exemplary teaching practices, their success in the classroom, along with an explanation of observed student outcomes. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are welcome. For more information visit: http://www.theccsn.com/journal-of-christian-teaching-practice/

Fulbright Scholar Opportunities in Israel. The 2017-2018 Fulbright U.S Scholar Program competition to the Middle East and North Africa is underway. Each year, U.S. scholars in a wide variety of academic disciplines teach and/or conduct research at educational institutions across the Middle East and North Africa. Applications for 2017-18 are currently being accepted from all levels of faculty, including early career, and professionals. Awards to Israel this year are highlighted below. The fellowship is designed to support research activity over two academic years, or 20 months total. To be eligible, candidates must have received their Ph.D. degrees no earlier than April 2014. Prior to confirmation of an award, candidates will be required to provide proof of acceptance as a postdoctoral research fellow at an accredited institution of higher education in Israel. Applicants must be U.S. citizens and the deadline for complete applications is August 1, 2016. For questions, please contact middleeastnorthafrica[at]iie[dot]org.

By: Andrew D. Pritchard, Ph.D., Esq.
Assistant Professor of Media Law and Ethics
Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication
Iowa State University of Science and Technology

I enjoy few things more than bragging about rock-star students, so I am especially happy to pass along some lessons learned this past semester as I facilitated an honors seminar titled “Media and Religion in American History. After the first week, I did little more than nudge and suggest as Maddy, Baylie, Garret, Jeff, and Chrissy taught each other through their perceptive observations and lively discussions.

The class met weekly for two hours. The only assignment was that students take turns being the discussion leader for the week, responsible for coming to class with a brief written summary of the week’s readings and a list of questions and discussion topics.

In designing the courses, I held to two main goals. First, I wanted to exploit the universality of historical writing to make the topic accessible to students from a variety of majors. I tried to avoid chapters or articles that depended heavily on specialist vocabulary or specific technical or theoretical knowledge. (When these were unavoidable, I paused discussion to explain them.) Second, I wanted to course to proceed beyond chronology and explore patterns, questions, and debates that transcend time periods or media formats. Thus, I alternated weeks between historical periods and more wide-ranging conceptual readings. Historically, the class began with the first North American printing press in the early 1600s. Thematically, students encountered such persistent controversies as who should control religious media, how religious and secular content creators depict one another, the commercialization of religious symbols, and depictions of non-Western religions and “fringe” spiritualities in popular entertainment.

At our last class meeting, I asked the students to assess the course, since honors seminars do not participate in the usual course evaluations. They had many heartening things to say about the course, echoing observations they had made throughout the semester:

Students enjoyed stepping outside their majors. The students majoring in technology or physical sciences, in particular, noted that they deliberately sought honors seminars on more humanistic topics than the rest of their coursework.

At the same time, they connected the seminar to their other coursework. The semester was replete with stories about topics or historical events from our readings that had come up in other classes. Students shared excitement and humor at recognizing the name of an important philosopher in readings for a different class, or encounter other aspects of a historical period we had studied.

Students liked the discussion format. Without question, the students’ most common and most forcefully expressed opinion about the class was how much they enjoyed following the discussion of difficult and complex subjects wherever it led, rather than the lecture-driven memorization they encountered in many other classes.

They appreciated not having the pressure of exams. It’s tempting to write off this point with a bit of snark, but these students were as diligent and organized as I could ask for. They noted throughout the semester that they read differently and got more value from their out-of-class time knowing that they were reading for ideas rather than for likely exam questions.

It’s difficult to imagine teaching a course in this structure, so dependent on student preparation and interaction, in a large lecture setting or with less-dedicated students. In the honors setting, however, the students came away from the course with not only an arsenal of insights about media and religion in society but also with an appreciation for this style of intrinsically motivated education in a community of learners.

I’ll happily share my syllabus, including full citations for the readings, with anyone interested in this kind of course. You can email me at apritch[at]iastate[dot]edu.

By: Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Department of Journalism and Integrated Media
School of Arts & Sciences
Biola University

For Christians, the video clip is hard to watch. Donald Trump is standing behind a podium at Liberty University, squinting out at the 13,000 packing the gym, attempting to quote a biblical passage. It’s in the New Testament, and his staff has given him the passage on cue cards or his speech paperwork. But his citation of it, and his quoting of it made national news for clumsiness. CNN’s headline says students laughed. The New York Times confirmed this, saying he had quoted Scripture “sort of.”

But that was mid-January. And by early May, Trump had nearly locked up the Republican nomination with Christian evangelicals voting for him by large percentages as caucuses clicked through state by state.

Why? Research by the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life posted about a week after Trump’s visit to Liberty suggests Americans might be less interested in a presidential candidate’s faith than in the past. Survey research is notoriously tricky to unpack, but the Pew Center study suggested more people regarded Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (in that order, by order of magnitude) as religious — in percentages far higher than their view of Trump. In fact, even Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders rank above Trump in respondents’ perception of religiosity.

Does it matter? Hard to say. In fact, it’s the not saying of things — or saying them badly — that has gotten Trump in trouble with Christian conservatives, but also with Muslims, across the U.S. and in other countries. His is a bombastic style of political rhetoric that crashes the gates of any topic he approaches. His political rivals in the Republican Party have, to a person, been people of more careful articulation. And their reticence to offend seems not to have won over the wider populace of Republican potential voters.

Hillary Clinton, a lifelong Methodist, was quoted by the Latin Post as being committed to her faith (she says she gets daily email devotionals from a minister who posts by 5 a.m.) But she, like her rival Bernie Sanders, speaks of openness to people of all faiths.The January Pew study suggested about one quarter of Americans see the decreasing influence of religion over public life as a good thing. And it also suggested the number of Americans is growing who say a president who has no personal faith at all is a good thing.

By way of comparison, the Pew Center, in 2012, found survey evidence that Americans said Mitt Romney’s faith was important to his winning the GOP nomination, but would be of little help in November against the incumbent president.

American Christians, we’re told, have in the last decade or so begun eschewing labels. The Pew Center, a year ago, reported evidence that Millennials as a whole were increasingly likely to check the “none” box on surveys about their faith. This response, the research suggests, does not mean they are not religious — it means their faith is more complex than the descriptors being arranged by those their parents’ and grandparents’ age.

And it’s those young people who are populating our classes. They are unenthused with news, are sensitive to hate speech, but are also suspicious of promises that have not come true for them (which might explain why young people have not fled from Trump wholesale, as might be expected, and why Bernie Sanders’ wildly idealistic rhetoric about change has its appeal to even well-educated young adults.)

Election cycles are a mirror put to our faces as Americans. We see ourselves in ways we can’t when the stakes are not as high, when the allure of voting power rises in our midst, and when hunger for new directions beckons.

And it is in election years, as well, when we see the faith questions of our students become more pointed, more real than ever. Something about a loud voice behind a podium — a voice saying something that draws roaring applause from massive crowds — has a way of setting off alarm bells in some of our students’ minds. Perhaps they hear themselves. Perhaps they hear the quiet warnings of someone they read in our classes (or that they heard from us or a peer in those classes.)

Now is the time for some serious teaching and learning about religion in the lives of our students — students whose participation in the upcoming election could matter very much to the future of American democracy and faith within it.

By Myna German
Professor
Mass Communications Department
Delaware State University

Anthropologists view religion as a response to life’s hazards (Davies, p. 10, in Eerdmans, 1982). Evolutionary psychologists would view it as an adaptive response, with believers selected for genetically because the religious impulse creates hope, fostering survival. Those with hope adapt better to stressful situations and survive in greater numbers.

Sociologists would view religious ritual as binding community, creating “in-gathering for special events” that unites a people, develops a community belief system that is pro-social. Theologians would look at layers of meaning, scriptural texts and decipher linguistic codes through the study of ancient languages.

What do professors do when they teach Religion and Media?  Essentially, they act as social scientists, bridging these fields, hoping that prospective reporters will catch the spark and write about these issues on various media platforms. In earlier times, the “religion beat” at a newspaper involved covering church barbeques and outings, new clergy appointments and was regarded as almost similar to a social
“beat.”

In the last twenty years, religion reporters have branched out to cover pressing social issues, ranging from The Boston Globe’s award-winning coverage of the pedophile priest scandal to the first ordination of female clergy in some denominations. Religion writing became thoroughly intertwined with religious philosophy and social change, coverage of racism and sexism. Like business in the 1980s, it left the back-page segregated status and moved onto the front page of the newspaper.

Therefore, a good religion reporter will have background in history, politics and the social sciences. While the trend in journalism education has been shifting toward cultivation of high-technology skills, more emphasis has to be placed on a basic and versatile social science education. It is not enough to know about technology, although that is a necessary but not sufficient condition. One must have the thorough analytical and research skills to connect the dots, be entrepreneurial enough to work on self-contained investigative teams and versatile enough to turn that reporting into multi-platform presentation.

How do professors accomplish this? Professors at major institutions sit on general education committees, university policy committees and shape curricula. These seats offer them a chance to comment on a variety of conditions in the university, not just journalism management. From these seats, they have to exert their leadership to shape the undergraduate curriculum, to make it not just technical or career-oriented but broad and critical-thinking oriented. We cannot afford to have a new generation of Facebook journalists who lack depth-reporting skills. The new journalist has to be a social critic, as always, but interdisciplinary and knowledgeable about everything that is going on in the world. This cannot be “trained for” technically. It involves everything from attending cultural and intellectual events on campus for their own sake, speaking up, writing about these events in a “macro” perspective, beyond attendance that one night.

Campus radio stations and TV stations play their role, but aspiring journalists need to be on-air as synthesizers, analysts of information, not just reporting on events. That is how a good religion reporter is born, by connecting the dots and finding patterns in these events, and then relating them to the “religion beat.”

Bibliography

Daives,D. (1982). The Study of Religion, in Eerdman’s, E., Handbook to the World’s Religions, pp. 10-18.

By Dr. Gregory Perreault
Appalachian State University

I know, I know. The answer is “no,” right? The problem is that “we don’t push them hard enough.”

As a journalism professor, the question of “how hard is too hard,” is a question I’ve faced teaching introductory journalism classes at both the Missouri School of Journalism and Appalachian State University. While the students are different, the dilemma is not—you can see where the journalism students are in terms of their skillset and yet you know where they need to be to be competitive for a job. That’s sometimes a challenge, as anyone who teaches those classes can tell you. Because the gap is large and, depending on whom you ask, getting larger. I’ve had assignments turned in where the president’s name is misspelled, where information from Wikipedia is just blatantly cut-and-pasted in the document (“you’re allowed to do this as a paraphrase–right?”), and where the writing reads like a text message.

And so I’ve pushed pretty hard in my classes to try to get students competitive. But recently I received an email from a former student that made me reconsider just how hard I was pushing.

The email was from a student who is far from what I would consider a “whiner” and it is a student who has become fairly successful in his college career. He noted that through the way that I worded my critiques and challenges to students he got the impression that he “couldn’t do it” and felt he had to prove me wrong.

The problem here was that his motivation for his success became “proving me wrong” as opposed to something else. This ended up being troubling for him. It motivated him through journalism school but now he’s not entirely sure, as a graduating senior, he even wants to be in this field.

It is worth considering if the way we motivate students to success–by making it hard–also sometimes forces people into a field, or conversely, forces people out of field they would have chosen.

It’s easy to forget that many journalists just fell into the field. As for myself, I fell into journalism during college inbetween a stay in pre-med and creative writing. But that choice led me to a field that I’ve enjoyed. In a “harder” program, perhaps I wouldn’t have stayed. Journalism is a big tent that requires and benefits from a variety of personalities and skillsets. Journalism would be deprived if only a single “type” of person can brave the gauntlets.

Granted, different programs have different expectations as students continue through the ranks, but I suspect we can all agree that its worth considering how to best motivating students to move through them.

The Religion and Media Interest Group (RMIG) distributes a quarterly newsletter and manages a Facebook page.  Those interested in sharing some of the duties required of this position should send us a private message through Facebook to discuss the possibilities of doing so for the 2017-8 academic year.  The tasks would include developing a list of opportunities for scholars and students interested in religion and the media research and practice. The responsibilities would also include updating the Facebook page with interesting articles relevant to media and religion and asking for contributors of content to our quarterly newsletter.

By Rick Moore, RMIG Membership Coordinator & Professor of Communciation at Boise State University

With the recent stock market plunge, most of us witnessed something in journalism we have seen over and over again and have come to predict every time the Dow takes a dive. Typically, there are numerous news stories about how bad the damage was. Reports basically ask, “What portion of people’s retirement funds has somehow vanished with a puff of smoke (or, with a drop in oil revenues)?”  In addition to this, journalists sometimes try to make the audience feel better by explaining how many billions of dollars Bill Gates, or some other uber-rich citizen, lost in the most recent sell-off.  Finally, there’s often a news piece where reporters consult financial advisors to help readers determine how to react. The experts tend to say things as profound as “You should trust the system and assume we’ll get over this, but here are some things you can do right now.”

This might seem an odd way to introduce a newsletter story about the membership in a professional organization, but the direction I’m taking is probably obvious. Our interest group membership could be thought of like the stock market. It goes up, and down, sometimes precipitously. If you are curious about the most recent of plunges, the official numbers—kindly provided by Pamella Price at AEJMC—tell us that our membership dropped from 92 in 2014 to 85 in 2015. Thus, we experienced about an eight percent decline in one year.  If reading such bad news gives you a frisson, I might add that our all-time high for the last ten years was in 2007, when 133 persons deigned to check the box to add a few dollars to their membership bill and join RMIG.  Do the math and you realize that the number of members in our group dropped by about a third since then.

By the way, Pamella informed me that AEJMC as a whole has declined in numbers recently. I suppose my next task, then, is to make you feel better by telling you how much the extremely wealthy have been hurt by such a catastrophe. But, you probably realize that the Newspaper Division—377 members, by the way—is not going to be decommissioned anytime soon. And, you probably don’t want them to be. Many of you are members of numerous divisions and interest groups and want all of them to be as fruitful as possible.

So, the final obligatory element for this predictable news article about the slings and arrows of outrageous membership misfortune is the “What to do?” part.  Of course, the answer is rather trite. We need to do a better job of making people aware of our group.

I would like to propose here a few ways of doing that.

For example, I might note that many of us are working on putting the final touches on a paper we hope to submit to RMIG for the Minneapolis convention. In the process, have we encountered researchers who seem to do important research in religion and media but (as far as we know) are not members of our collective? Perhaps sending a quick e-mail to some of those scholars letting them know of the interest group would help our numbers.

In a similar vein, many of us are part of other professional organizations that might have members who are unaware that RMIG exists. Does that group have a Facebook page, or a listserv on which some kind of announcement could be placed?  At the group’s annual gatherings, is there a bulletin board where a simple announcement about the existence of our group could be placed?

Obviously, there are numerous other strategies available to us, and all of them could have the potential to “pay dividends,” or “increase our stock,” or, whatever silly economic metaphor you wish to use. The main message here is that, to a certain extent, we do have some ways of improving RMIG’s status. Yes, the market works in mysterious ways, but there is no mystery to the fact that we can do some things to improve our organization’s economic forecast.

I want to make you aware of an opportunity to join with a group of scholars who might have teaching and research interests that overlap with yours. The Religion and Media Interest Group is a dynamic group of academics and professionals within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. It’s composed of individuals who think that understanding religious dimensions of mass communication are worth very serious consideration. Every year at the AEJMC conference they have research, teaching, and professional sessions within this broad area. They’d love for you to consider joining them. If you have interest in submitting a paper for the 2016 conference (Minneapolis), the call information is here.

http://religionandmedia.org/aejmc-2016-religion-and-media-interest-group/

If you would like more information about RMIG, feel free to contact Rick Moore (rmoore@boisestate.edu), the Membership Coordinator for the group.

By Stephen D. Perry, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Regent University
At my former university, the student wellness offices emphasized seven areas of health. I probably cannot rattle off all seven. Certainly there were the main areas of physical, social, psychological, and nutrition. But one of the other seven listed was “spiritual.” Yes, my state sponsored university’s student wellness office acknowledged that students needed spiritual wellness.

In what ways does our media deal with issues of spiritual wellness? There are programs that deal with such questions such as the current Madame Secretary. In that show, the Secretary of State is married to a professor of religion who often wrestles on the edge of the battle between a religious ethic and serving his country in various capacities. But the way he wrestles with the questions of faith are not purely ideological nor are they portrayed as naive. They are immersed in theological and philosophical depth and nuance and require inward soul searching for the best option between choices that many would see as bad and awful.

Other programs have had their faith moments. House had them. The Simpsons had them. Reality shows like Survivor or The Surreal Life had them. While less central to the storyline in these cases, religion still made its mark.

Another of today’s reality shows is playing out on our 24-hour cable news channels that are covering jihadi bent religious zealots. But the news channels cannot even agree how to discuss the religious motivation of the zealots. One channel regularly uses terms like “radical Muslims” and describes some of their attacks for their religious motivations against Christians, Jews, and even peaceful Muslims. Other channels parrot back the language chosen by the US State Department that largely avoids recognizing that the motivations behind the actions of ISIS are heavily religious.

So what is the result of how the networks handle religion? I believe that without the depth of compassion and nuance exhibited in shows like Madame Secretary, the news coverage is likely causing increasing apathy and skepticism toward religion in viewers.

This is a subject that needs study. How does the media’s lack of clarity and depth on the religious issue simply turn people off toward one of the areas of wellness that everyone needs. Would the media be acting responsibly if it were to increase people’s apathetic response toward exercise or toward vegetables? No! Thus, the First Lady goes around championing healthy eating practices, and the media covers it.

It is time for scholars and media practitioners to stand up and call for religiously astute journalists, both intellectually and experientially, to take major roles in the coverage of the activities of ISIS. Thus, we must train journalists in religion. It should be a strongly encouraged minor or second major. Further, just like we expect diversity in order to properly represent the experiences of different people groups, we need to have religious diversity in the newsroom with journalists reflecting experientially multiple religious perspectives.

Never has there been a time where excellence in reporting on religion was more crucial than in this day. And if I have any ability to look to the future, the need is likely to continue escalating as populations and national boarders continue to change in religiously oriented ways. The RMIG is properly positioned to be at the center of this effort. I encourage you to champion the religious education component for journalists at your universities, and would love to see research and theory advanced on the effects of religious coverage.

By Debra Mason, Director of the Center of Religion and the Professions, University of Missouri’s School of Journalism

As a religion reporter and director of a professional association of religion journalists, I knew much of what to expect from Spotlight, the critically acclaimed film that details efforts by The Boston Globe’s investigative unit to cover clergy abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

The film, which opened nationwide Nov. 18, details the Globe’s investigation, from its start under then new editor Marty Baron, to the first day of publication in January 2002. The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its documentation of “systemic” cover-ups of dozens of abusive priests being moved from parish to parish, without criminal charges.

The story line was familiar. In the 2000s, following The Globe’s explosive report, nearly every religion journalist in the country received calls from abuse victims whose complaints had previously gone unreported. Some of us heard from victims decades earlier; for me it was in the late 1980s, when I was a religion beat reporter in Ohio. But the unsealing of court records, pressure from advocacy groups and other changes that opened up troves of documents, moved the story from he-said, she-said, to documented criminal acts more easily reported.

Although documents were more easily found after The Globe coverage, it nonetheless remained grueling to listen to the life-long mental and physical effects of abuse on its victims. The beat lost a number of veteran journalists in the 2000s, victims of burnout from covering clergy abuse day after day. For several years, religion beat reporters wrote of little else.

But what Spotlight does superbly is show some hazards of writing about terrible moral failures of an institution you rely on for spiritual guidance. Each Spotlight team—The Globe’s name for its investigative journalist unit—was raised Roman Catholic. Although most were “lapsed” Catholics, it nonetheless shows the anger, emotional pain and confusion they experienced individually as the magnitude of abuse and coverup became clear.

Covering corruption, hypocrisy, and crime within a faith is a hazard of the religion beat and one caution I share with religion reporting students. Religion beat specialists learn things that make you question, in intimate ways, the meaning of faith, power, human agency, vocation and values. For some, notably former Los Angeles Times Reporter William Lobdell, it’s too much. Lobdell famously wrote the book Losing My Religion, about losing his faith after covering a string of clergy abuse and other stories.

The film also shows, if briefly, how victims of child abuse often struggle with shame, guilt and emotional fragility their entire lives. Substance abuse, suicide and an inability to function in social settings are among the brokenness journalists sometimes encounter among abuse victims. Young journalists, especially, need to see beyond the short-term gain of a story and understand the need to take extra care when reporting on this population.

The movie also doesn’t gloss over problems that exist in every newsroom, with many investigative stories. For example, previous stories about abuse were buried in the Globe’s metro section years earlier. Skeptical colleagues were considerable nay-sayers. The Catholic Church put up repeated road blocks, as did some civil servants.

Finally, as the closing notes say, the Globe did more than 600 followup stories. Many of these were written by Globe Religion Reporter Michael Paulson. Although Michael is only mentioned a couple times in Spotlight, he heavily tracked the impact and followup of the reporting, sharing in the paper’s Pulitzer.

Some of the journalists in real life have complained about their portrayals, so it is important to remember that the story is fictionalized to some extent.

Veteran journalist and trainer Steve Buttry has added his suggestions (https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/responding-to-spotlight-advice-for-investigating-sexual-abuse-by-clergy/s) for lessons on how to cover clergy abuse. It’s a powerful teaching moment that will remain relevant for years to come.

By:Julia Duin, RMIG Member and Snedden Fellow
Journalism Department at the University of Alaska

The Religion and Media and Small Programs interest groups combined forces on the last day of the recent AEJMC conference  to present “Putting Religion into the Nut Graph: Ideas on Transforming Religion News into the Small Journalism Program. The panel was proposed by Julia Duin, who taught at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks during the 2014-2015 year. As one of the panelists, she offered research naming specific general journalism textbooks commonly used on college campuses and how none of them teach on religion reporting.

Other panelists included Wally Metts, of Spring Arbor University; Regent University professor Stephen Perry and Biola University professor Michael Loginow. What follows is the part of Julia Duin’s presentation that would interest R&M members:

I suggested this panel because I was so disgusted with the lack of any kind of instruction on religion reporting in the typical journalism textbook. There are chapters on sports writing, business writing and several other specialties in these textbooks. But to paraphrase the late George Cornell of the Associated Press whose famous 1994 piece comparing money spent on religion vs sports, people spend millions on sports but billions on religion. This priority is not reflected in the typical basic journalism text.

I’ve taught religion writing at two different places: the University of Maryland and the University of Alaska. The latter, located in Fairbanks and known as UAF, is where I’ve been this past year. Both times, I had to put together 15 weeks of instruction not only about how to report on various religions but also some basic information about the religions themselves. Fortunately, I’ve master’s degrees in both journalism and religion and have covered religion for more than 40 years.

Most students at state universities, I’ve found, know next to nothing about religion and even at a Baptist university where I taught two years ago, their knowledge was limited to their own group. When I’ve taught other journalism courses, there’s been no lack of textbooks to use. In teaching religion reporting, there’s very little out there. I spent the early part of this summer going through every textbook I could find. I split them into before 9/11 and after 9/11. As for the “before” ones, you’d expect the investigative ones to have something on religion. Cults have been big since the 1970s, so this omission was inexcusable. Even advanced reporting textbooks like “Getting the Story: An Advanced Reporting Guide to Beats, Records and Sources (McMillan Publishing Co., 1994) had sections on labor, business, education, environment, science, medicine and health. Religion wasn’t even mentioned in the index!

The only thing out there – and this was published in 1995 – was Judith Buddenbaum’s Reporting News About Religion.

As for the post-9/11 – and post Catholic sex abuse crisis which came to a head in 2002 – textbooks, the choices weren’t much better. For instance, recent editions of Marvin Mencher’s News Reporting and Writing book has whole chapters on sports and business reporting and education. He briefly mentions religious stereotyping, mentions creation science in the education chapter and gives a half page to religion in an ethics chapter way at the end of the book. Specifically, it was the last chapter and it’s called “The Morality of Journalism.” As most of us know, it’s the rare journalism class that deals with the final chapters in a textbook.

Tim Harrower’s Inside Reporting book, which is very popular and has cool graphics, has sections on covering meetings, politics and sports. On one page, they list other specialized beats, including religion, environment, children/families, obits, health, biz and education.

John Bender’s Writing and Reporting for the Media, which is one of my favorites, does say in a chapter on feature reporting that you might have to cover Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah and St. Patrick’s Day but makes NO mention of the religious beliefs behind these days and how to be on the alert for them.

I also checked out News Reporting and Writing, published by the Missouri Group. They had chapters on sports and business but only threw in two mentions of religion in a chapter on ethics.

And then there’s Routledge, which has specialty books on everything from AIDS, health, Bollywood and digital storytelling to family communication, climate change in China and family communication language in public spaces in Japan. Also, business, cyberspace law, gender, branding, comics and graphic novels. I went through 840 listings to find Daniel Short’s 2012 book Media and Religion, which includes chapters on world religions and denominations, cultural religion, the Internet and entertainment and the media. I’d like to know if anyone is using it but I will suggest that its $41.95 price tag is high. That is the closest to a recent textbook. There were related titles such as Mindful Journalism and New Ethics in a Digital Era: A Buddhist Approach; Religion and HipHop,Japanese Religion on the Internet and God, Jews and the Media, which is about religion and Israeli media. All very interesting but none are quite what I’d need for a beginner course on the God beat.

And then there’s the ReligionLink web site, which has suggestions and resources for everything from Pope Francis’ “going green” encyclical to a religion stylebook, reporting guides and a religion primer by Debra Mason and the late Diane Connolly. Some things are very up-to-date; other things like the religion calendar, are not. But it’s the main game in town.

As good as many of these resources are, they’re not part of the main course for the typical college journalist. We’re out there as a specialty but we’re not good enough to be included up there with politics, sports and business.  I’m thinking the answer is not to write yet another textbook on religion reporting but to think up ways to get a chapter in existing textbooks. Some of these are already adding material on gender, which is a much newer subject area than religion. If we do not strategize how to do this, we may lose this opportunity forever.

The latest issue of the Journal of Media and Religion centers on a topic long ignored in scholarly journals: The teaching of religion and news.

The Journal of Media and Religion’s Vol. 14, No. 3 issue, published by Taylor and Francis, includes an analysis of religion and media syllabus plus a study of religious literacy among journalism students.

Debra L. Mason of University of Missouri served as guest editor and writes an introductory review of the topic. Articles include one by Louisville’s John Ferré on using games to help his students understand religion. An article by Dan Stout of BYU Hawaii looks at the use of drama to teach about religion. Greg Perreault from Appalachian State has an anlaysis of religion and media syllabi, while Jeremy Litteau from Lehigh reports the results of a religious literacy survey of college students, including journalism students.

Check your library for availability or order a copy directly from Taylor and Francis: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hjmr20/current.

By: Amr A. Elafifi, Undergraduate Research Ambassador, University of Kansas

In my first semester, I enrolled in an independent study because I needed an extra class. Every semester since, I’ve been able to work on a research project with a fellow student or a faculty member. Research is a daunting process full of obscurities and gaps to be investigated that often are not expressed in textbooks or even classrooms. The critical skills higher education allegedly supplements its students could be overseen by the degree of certainty expressed by professors throughout one’s college career.

The project my co-author and I presented last August taught me a lot. I learned how to construct a survey, write consent forms, fill out IRB applications and dig for literature. I had to contact over a hundred journalists in Egypt and follow-up with them regarding any questions they had about the project. Most of the work I did he could’ve done in half the time; but he took the time to help me. His encouragement and patience were crucial.

My co-author was a graduate teaching assistant with which I was acquainted with, but involving undergraduate students doesn’t always have to go this route. Assignments in methods classes could be structured to investigate a particular question and finally written cohesively into a research paper, or a reasonable start to one. Specifically in Media Studies, professors have the opportunity to teach students how to code texts, construct surveys, or hold scholarly interviews. In large introductory classes, teaching assistants could speak to students about their own research. This is particularly important for journalism and other fields that don’t have typical labs, as many of the students we speak to don’t know that research in these fields exist. Students could be encouraged to attend brown-bag sessions where graduate students share their work or even graduate-level classes. Departments can also offer scholarships to undergraduate researchers to incentivize students to work on research, which should not be too hard because most professors I’ve dealt with have been very kind, encouraging, and supportive.

This semester, I am an undergraduate research ambassador at the University of Kansas. As ambassadors we are hired by the Center of Undergraduate Research to visit classes and talk to the students about research and how they could get involved. The office has research awards (worth $1,000) and travel awards (worth $500) that we promote too. Finally, we help organize events that host work that is being done to encourage students.

Finally, attending an academic conference was important to me because it humanized a very abstract academic community I aspire to be a part of. The most enjoyable part of the conference was witnessing the professor’s curiosity closely and their critical faculties coming to play. In a presentation on oral histories for instance, the presenter and a faculty member attending had a heated discussion about the real difference between it and long journalistic stories. Furthermore, I was able to meet some of the scholars I’d only known through their work—which was very inspiring.

At the time of this writing, college campuses are undergoing political contentions, as are some cities around the country. If there is an epistemic value to a democracy we can truly appreciate and live with, it is one that must be characterized be deepened respect and understanding. That is, one that does not appreciate fetishized generalization. This is perhaps the timeliest reason why the tools deeper readings and critical assessments should be shared with students.

According to the website of the U.S. News and World Report, Seton Hall University has a Roman Catholic religious affiliation. The new College of Communication and the Arts at Seton Hall University is has publicized several open positions:

Founding Dean, College of Communication and the Arts

Associate Professor of Graduate Communication

Assistant Professor of Journalism

Assistant Professor of Public Relations

Faculty Associate of Digital Film & Television Production

For more information on these openings, please go to: https://jobs.shu.edu

***

Also, Pepperdine University has an Organizational Communication/Public Relations position open. The Communication Division invites applications for a tenure-track appointment in public relations and organizational communication, beginning in the fall of 2016. The successful candidate will be able to teach several courses within our majors including, but not limited to, Principles of Public Relations, Public Relations Writing and Media, Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, Organizational Theory, and Training and Development. Additional courses might include communication theory, research and ethics. The successful candidate will also serve as an academic adviser for students and co-adviser of Waves PRSSA and/or The Waves Effect, the integrated student-run strategic communication firm. Documented research interest, teaching experience, and professional experience in public relations are required. Ph.D. or Ed.D is required.

Pepperdine’s undergraduate Seaver College is a residential liberal arts college of nearly 3400 students situated in Malibu, Calif. The successful candidate should be able to express a commitment to Christian mission of the university. We encourage applications from persons with diverse backgrounds and cultural experiences, including women and persons of color.  Application review began November 1 and will continue until a candidate has been selected. For more information contact Search Committee Chair Michael Murrie (Michael[dot]murrie[at]pepperdine[dot]edu).

***

The Pew Research Center has listed 15 positions in public opinion and media research.  Some of these positions involve analyses of religious populations or survey data.  The qualifications for the positions vary, and various types of degree holders are encouraged to apply.  For more information, please visit http://www.pewresearch.org/about/careers/.

***

Finally, the Department of Communication Studies at New Mexico State University invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor, beginning August 2016, with primary teaching and research interests in communication technology and a preferred secondary interest in persuasion, political, health, interpersonal, or culture. The position requires a Ph.D. in Communication, excellence in teaching, and excellent references. Ability and willingness to teach quantitative or qualitative research methods courses is desirable. Evidence of or the initiation of programmatic research is also required. A history of external funding and/or an interest in pursuing such funding is preferred.

For complete job description and to apply visit https://jobs.nmsu.edu, position number #1500142. For more information contact search committee chair Dr. Greg G. Armfield at Armfield@NMSU.edu. Please attach the following documents to your online application: 1) letter of interest, 2) curriculum vitae, 3) evidence of teaching effectiveness, 4) example of scholarship, 5) unofficial transcripts, and 6) a list of three references including contact information. Deadline date: January 4, 2016.

We have begun post articles on the Religion and Media Interest Group’s Facebook page that our membership may find interesting.  These posts vary in nature for several reasons.  First, we hope that the media coverage of religion and religious groups can be used as examples for those teaching Religion and Media.  Second, we hope that the curiosity of our membership may result in posing research questions that can be further current understandings of interactions between media and religion.  Finally, the diversity of the news coverage posted is meant to be inclusive and create opportunity for intellectual consideration of media and religion.

In addition to posting about Pope Francis’ trip to the United States, we are posting about less frequently covered events.  These events include violence at times.  For example, the attack of a Catholic mission in Bangladesh.  Other times, the posts discuss social trends about the growth of minority faiths in the United States. While some articles may exemplify the emergence of religious coverage in sports news, others may pose philosophical questions about the challenges of religion in contemporary society.

We invite you to like our Facebook page to join in on the discussion!

Philosopher John Dewey argued that the value of research and theory rests in pragmatics or the degree that they are experienced in everyday life.

From the Interest Group Head

Lessons from John Dewey: Media and Religion is a Vibrant Research Field, but is it a Pragmatic One?

By: Daniel A. Stout, BYU-Hawaii

Commencing a new year in the Religion and Media Interest Group, I’m mindful of our progress in the last two decades. As the new head of the organization, my first column flows out of experiences stored up over years of working with so many of you. Not long ago the topic of media and religion was missing from the AEJMC conference program. Few articles, books, and university courses. Much has changed; research abounds, and a scholarly journal houses much of our literature. In contemporary culture, media use is changing, and religiosity reveals much about the cultural shifts bringing this about. While popular media often treat our subject superficially, our work provides deeper descriptions of religious audiences, more precise depictions of denominations, and credible theorizing in a digital age comparable in its societal impact to the industrial revolution. I wonder, however, if the pragmatic dimension lags behind our research contributions. If the preeminent pragmatist of the Chicago School of Sociology John Dewey observed our work, he might praise the productivity yet question the degree of its application. Do our graduates apply or at the very least think with the concepts we write about while working in media industries and fulfilling roles as conscientious citizens? As Dewey’s Art and Pragmatics stresses experiential engagement as the sine qua non of popular culture, it behooves us to ask: Are students equipped to experience ideas about media and religion upon leaving the university?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner laments, “Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.” Such is the gulf between much of media – religion research, and the need to insert it into the classroom. Research should not be confined to journals; we have a moral obligation to tell pupils what we know. This came up in a doctoral seminar at Rutgers when my professor Stan Dietz, former president of the International Communication Association (ICA), was distressed about the absence of current research in basic textbooks. He challenged textbook author Joseph Devito on this point at a conference, who replied that undergraduates aren’t ready for sophisticated scholarly studies. When Dietz disagreed, Devito challenged him to write such a research-based primer, which Dietz ultimately did. The point is, our field will not progress without a rich discussion of the latest studies with students, who in turn, give such concepts life as journalists, public relations practitioners, and other roles including citizens and family members. We are poised to tackle the pragmatics dimension in the next phase of our work.

In short, pragmatics is the application of theory and the expectation our ideas will find their way into actual experience. Where do we begin to make this happen? How do we give research life, and not let it die on the vine? While good ideas inevitably surface, curricula provide outlets for important discussion among students and faculty, who, gradually diffuse ideas into the larger community. Here are some ideas toward this end:

• Create a course on media and religion. While the number of schools offering such courses has grown, many do not yet offer such classes. If your institution has a course, teach it regularly and update material as needed.
• Engage deans, chairs, and faculty members in discussions about the subject of media and religion. Be assertive in making our case. Decision-makers are often unfamiliar with the literature and theoretical underpinnings of the field, despite the fact that religion has risen in importance comparable to politics in world public affairs. As head of the interest group this year, I plan to discuss our discipline with academic stakeholders, informing them about RMIG and our progress.
• Offer lectures and special presentations at your university. Many students will opt out of the media and religion course, so speakers and panel discussions are effective ways of reaching the larger campus community.
• Host a one-day RMIG meets once a year, so smaller conferences provide additional forums for research presentations and student involvement. Elon University has hosted such events as has BYU with its “Mormon Media Studies Conference.”
• Invite interested colleagues to the 2016 AEJMC conference in Minneapolis and to join RMIG. Be a mentor. Begin new collaborations. Submit panel ideas and invite professors outside the interest group to participate. Encourage graduate students to submit papers and participate in panels.

Bridging our research to the pragmatic realm of students’ everyday experience won’t occur over night.  In the general field, ideas such as diffusion, elaboration likelihood model, interpretive community, integrated marketing communication, postmodern theory, and others have made the leap from the Academy to pragmatic use in the larger society. This would not have happened without a prior presence in the university curriculum.

Returning to Dewey, theory and experience have no distinction:

“Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not.” There will come a time when our ideas are put into practice on a grander scale. Professionals, theologians, and politicians will seek us out as they ponder the media – religion question. This requires bolder action on our part including accelerated efforts to make our case for greater prominence in communication programs. Take a dean to lunch this week!

Did you know about the Religion and Media Interest Group Facebook page?

Starting this fall, our Facebook presence is growing.  In addition to publicizing our activities, we are including numerous examples of media coverage of religion.  Please like our page and read our newsletter!

We also have some great resources on our newsletter that can be helpful.  Some syllabi are available for different courses and you can access that  (http://www.religionandmedia.org/syllabi/).  Further, there are other resources for teaching (http://www.religionandmedia.org/resources-for-reporting-religion-news/).  We encourage you to check out our website (www.religionandmedia.org) and to follow us on Facebook!

If you have any ideas, questions or concerns, please send us a a message and we will be happy to consider your suggestions.

Attendees at the 2015 Religion and Media Interest Group voted for the officer positions for the next year. The officers will lead the program planning, research competition, teaching programming, PF&F programming, newsletter, website and all other RMIG efforts. The new officers are:

Chair: Dan Stout, Brigham Young University-Hawaii

Vice Chair: Joel Campbell, Brigham Young University

Research: Debra Mason, University of Missouri

Newsletter Editor: Mariam Alkazemi, Gulf University for Science & Technology

PF&R: Greg Perreault, Appalachian State University

Teaching Cecile Holmes, University of South Carolina

Membership: Rick Moore, Boise State University

By Wafa Unus

In public discourse, there is often a misunderstanding in the historicity of religion and a displacement of religiosity in areas more suitably analyzed through political contexts. The political history of a people is often mistaken for their religious history. While the two are by no means completely separable, the unintelligible mashing together of the two contexts, as is often done by the media, presents unique challenges.

There are numerous opportunities for those in the religious communities to change the conversation about religion, to correct misconceptions or dispel stereotypes through a growing interfaith culture in the United States. However, the news media the culprit situated at the forefront of the offenses to religious understanding is often the same entity that should, at least to some degree, be providing the populace with accurate, albeit basic, education on topics of discussion in public discourse.

The “media are the problem” stance is a difficult one to overcome in minority communities that feel routinely subjected to misrepresentations. A level of distrust is perhaps even more dangerously superseded by a level of disinterest. Communities begin to shy away from coverage, look at reporters with degrees of skepticism and a feel hesitant to speak freely when the spotlight is, often involuntarily, thrust upon them due to some event caused by someone with a similar sounding name. This discomfort is not invisible to the camera and the community essentially finds itself in another strange position. That hesitance to be portrayed as something they are not, is what causes them to more easily be seen as what they are not.

This, along with the lack of education of reporters on the basic tenets of world religion, and particularly the understanding the history of religion not just as milestones noted in religious scripture but in the political and geographic contexts that shape all histories, makes for extremely poor reporting on minority religious communities in the United States.

With a basic understanding of the challenges that face my own community, the Muslim community, I decided to purchase a small 20 year-old local Muslim newspaper that had long operated more as an aggregator of content than a producer of true local service journalism.

In an effort to better prepare young journalists for dealing with minority communities, particularly religious minorities, I have begun to use the newspaper as a sort of lab. Young journalists of all backgrounds can learn how to interact with a minority religious community and navigate the nuances of understanding the variety of cultures of which they are composed. Likewise, reporters’ interaction with the Muslim community allows them to feel a little less apprehension because of their sense of ownership over their local media. The facilitating of this relationship may slowly, and on a very small scale, make an impact on the preparedness for young reporters to report on minority and religious communities and to give minority and religious communities a greater confidence in their ability to interact with media and journalists.

It is my hope that through this, both journalist and reader will develop a more intelligent, ethical and understanding relationship with one another and subsequently contribute to the production of better, more accurate and more purposeful journalism that is knowledge-based and culturally competent.

Wafa Unus is the publisher of The Arizona Muslim Voice and a doctoral student at Arizona State University.

By:  Rick Clifton Moore (Boise State University)

Having watched Lionel Messi and Thomas Müller in this summer’s World Cup soccer matches, I walked onto the pitch for my fall rec league thinking that my game would be greatly improved. But, alas, it really hadn’t. My dribbling was not visibly better. I hadn’t become a better tackler. I couldn’t even bite my opponents in the professional fashion of famed Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez.

What I learned from this letdown was that watching an accomplished person do something does not necessarily equal learning to do it at that capacity yourself.

As noted, my role as a footballer is limited to rec league. I don’t get paid to play. Yet, when I look at my own profession, I see symptoms of the thought pattern I just described. Many college professors, yours truly included, think that students can learn something by simply watching teachers do it.

Perhaps the worst manifestation of this is our teaching of “critical thinking.” Assuming that we are all masters in this realm, we exhibit our skills “on the field” in an activity called the lecture. And, in doing so, we expect our students to mimic our moves and become great critical thinkers through such mimicry.

Some might object to the way I’ve described this, and claim that they engage in “discussion,” not lecture. But, the principle still largely applies. The prof is in control of the thinking. Students have only a moment to cogitate and make their own decisions. Some never orally engage the topic at all, unless forced.

Given all of this, I felt greatly enlightened when Bill Roberson, of the University at Albany (SUNY), presented a workshop at my campus not long ago. He suggested that one of the best ways to help students improve their critical thinking skills is to require them to make a difficult decision, then to have them go back and analyze their own decision-making process.

One great way of accomplishing this is to break a class into small groups, four or five students in each. At that point, the instructor can pose them a challenging multiple-choice question, requiring them to select an answer. Indeed, I’ve found that questions with a counter-intuitive answers are often best.

To make this visual, the teacher can give the teams sets of five cards, each with a different color and letter, one color for A, another for B, etc. After posing the question, and allowing the students to discuss it in their group, time is called and a spokesperson (actually, “show-person”) from each group must raise the card that they thought was correct.

The important part, however, is what follows. If the question is challenging enough, the students see a variety of responses revealed by their competing teams. And, the instructor then asks students to return to discussion and talk about whether they might want to change their answer. And, returning the students to their groups, the prof asks them to discuss why they chose their answer. In doing so, the students must consider what they were assuming, what ideas they might have excluded, and how they came to select what might not be a slam dunk response (or, an open net shot, to stick to a single metaphor).

Allow me to give a more concrete example. Recently, I had a class in which we were discussing media coverage of Islam. I created a multiple choice question related to how American commercial television drama portrayed Muslims immediately after 9/11. I followed the steps above, and after two rounds of vote casting, we had a very fruitful discussion of how groups selected their answers. Then, I asked the students read portions of an article by Evelyn Alsultany from which I had determined the “correct” answer—the correct answer being that positive portrayal actually increased. (The study is available from Project Muse here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/v065/65.1.alsultany.html.)

In reading parts of Alsultany’s article, some students became interested in an ensuing issue, namely, how the author made sense of what most people would not expect. She claims that the positive images that existed actually justify discrimination. That claim allowed further discussion to develop.

Though there certainly is no foolproof mechanism for engaging students, and most classroom activities wear thin with repeated use, I have found Roberson’s tip to be useful in a number of settings. Most importantly, I’ve found that it really does get more students actively engaging with a difficult question, and then engaging in reflection as to the basis for, and strength of their own answer. In soccer terms, each player should get more “touches” using the method described above, than in the typical lecture or class discussion. More players are in the game; fewer are watching. I perceive that to be a good thing, assuming a referee is available, in case there are any biters in the class.

 The author is the Teaching Chair of AEJMC’s Religion and Media Interest Group.

By Dr. Jim Trammell, High Point University

*Recipient of the RMIG 2014 Top Faculty Paper Award

Thank God for the iPhone. I use it to call my mother. I use it to update my Facebook status. I use it to take a picture of my cup of coffee, and then upload the picture to my WordPress blog. I can even use it to compose this newsletter column while riding on the bus on my way to work, then email it the newsletter editor ten minutes before it is due.

And if need be, I learned I can use my iPhone to fight Satan!

The “Shut Up, Devil!” app puts “The power to silence Satan . . . in your pocket!” The app gives would-be Satan silencers “[digital] cars that present Scriptures with personalized application” [sic] to read the devil makes you anxious, angry, or feel sinful in any other way. It’s “app-wide search make[s] it easy to find the Scriptures you need, when you need them.” “Shut Up, Devil” also allows users to “stay on the offensive by setting reminders to speak Scripture aloud,” like the “Reminders” function bundled with the iPhone, but with more Satan-fighting power, apparently.

The “Shut Up, Devil!” app raises some interesting questions. Could I fight the devil without the app? Am I at a disadvantage in fighting the devil if I don’t have an iPhone? Is the devil more easily defeated on the Android platform or Apple’s iOS? If the iPhone is a powerful tool for fighting the devil, do I cheapen its spiritual significance if I put the “Shut Up, Devil!” app next to my Angry Birds app? Is it okay to open the Pizza Hut app and order a large cheese stuffed crust pizza through my phone while using the “Shut Up, Devil!” app, or would that be considered sacrilege? And if that is sacrilege, is there an app I can download that would allow me to receive penance directly to my phone?

Religion and media have been inseparable partners for centuries. As media evolved, so did our engagement with religious faith. Before mass media, we passed our religious faith and traditions through oral communication, relying on perspective of the speaker’s experiences and knowledge to shape religion to the next generation. The printing press moved Scripture from exclusive confines of the Church to the congregants, giving the public agency in their religious practice and fueling the Protestant Reformation. The televangelists of the late 20th century shaped the public perception of Christianity as a faith based on prosperity and entertainment.

The “Shut Up, Devil!” app may be the newest effort to merge religion and media, but it is certainly not innovative. If anything, the “Shut Up, Devil!” was inevitable. Religious apps are only a new phenomenon in as much as the digital tablet is a new medium. If there is anything new about the “Shut Up, Devil” app, it’s in how the app embodies the next chapter in the centuries-long story of religion and media.

I addressed this merger of religious belief and tablet media at the 2014 AEJMC convention in Montréal. My presentation argued that the twenty-first century’s “electronic church” is moving from television to tablets, and argued that the content of Christian apps centers, among other things, on convenience. Just as the iPhone makes it easy for me to call Mom, take photos, and finish this column in the next ten minutes, so do many of the popular Christian apps make it easy for me to locate Scripture, post prayer requests, and, in the case of the Jesus Calling app, read a devotion that says I am special just the way I am.

Tablet media succeed by demanding as little effort from the user as possible. Christian apps also make few demands of the user, suggesting a practical strategy in fighting the devil comes not from a lifetime of prayer and supplication, but from downloading an app. If there is any real power in the “Shut Up, Devil!” app, it’s in the mistaken belief that spiritual and religious exercises are made stronger when they require little effort. The power of the “Shut Up, Devil!” app comes not from its purported ability to hold Satan at bay, but from its ability to turn religious practices into a convenience.

It’s easy to believe that the iPhone really doesn’t do anything new for religious belief. Christians have been fighting Satan for 2000 years without the iPhone, and will continue to tell him to “Shut Up” long past when tablet media are made obsolete by new technologies. But tablet media threaten to redefine what it means to engage with religious faith. Just as the printing press and broadcasting technologies affected how Christians practiced their faith, so can tablet media present a dominant approach Christianity, one that privileges ease and convenience over effort and reverence.

Jim Y. Trammell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Communication
High Point University