In the past three years, a quintet of engaging religion news sites has cropped up across the country. Why? By the end of the past decade, it was clear that newspaper editors were cutting costs wherever they could and the religion beat was often the first to go. Numerous cities were without any non-sectarian religion coverage whatsoever as religion reporters were either laid off (which is what happened to me) or transferred to other beats (Jeffrey Weiss for the Dallas Morning News is a key example). One writer who was laid off from her Connecticut paper was Tracy Simmons. She dreamed up her own religion news web site for the Hartford area called creedible.com and did quite well, eventually winning an award in 2011 for best religion news section. She was a pioneer in independent religion news sites.
