For journalists who care about life on the Godbeat, the list of the dead and the missing in action has turned into a grim litany.
Some religion-beat jobs have been killed, while others have been downsized, out-sourced, frozen or chopped up and given to reluctant general-assignment reporters.
Gentle readers, please rise for a moment of silence.
The Orlando Sentinel. The Dallas Morning News. Time. The Chicago Sun-Times. The Rocky Mountain News. U.S. News & World Report. The list goes on, especially if you include smaller newsrooms that have always struggled to support Godbeat jobs.
At least 16 major news outlets abandoned or reduced commitment to religion news as a specialty beat in recent years, according to the Religion Newswriters Association. Two of those empty desks ”” at the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe ”” were recently filled.
“In the 1990s and early 2000s, the largest papers often had multiple religion reporters. That has disappeared, for sure. That is where the biggest cut for religion has occurred,” said RNA director Debra Mason, who teaches at the University of Missouri.