CNN Increases Focus on Faith-Based Stories

I’ve really appreciated the Religion page at USAToday, not to mention The Christian Post and Christianity Today Online.   These sources have  provided me with access to stories that I felt were both (a) significant and newsworthy; and (b) under-reported in the Christian blogosphere.

But CNN has really taken the reporting of religious stories to the next level with their Belief Blog.    While some older stories have been backdated into the blog, you’ll find the official welcome on May 19th, where after considering several recent general-interest stories, the editors continue:

…Faith isn’t incidental to these stories; it’s the driving force behind them. Covering those faith angles is this blog’s mission. CNN’s Belief Blog will focus on the places where faith bumps up against the rest of the news and the rest of the world, from breaking news to entertainment, from business to politics, and from foreign affairs to sports.

We’ll also shine a light on religion as most people experience it in daily life. In a shrinking world, knowing what it’s like to undergo an adult baptism or to pray to Mecca five times a day is essential to understanding the world’s most powerful leaders – and, perhaps, the person in the next cubicle.

And as the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated grow, we’ll cover the rising voices of atheists, those who call themselves “spiritual but not religious” and others who are religiously conflicted or confused. Covering the faithful necessitates covering their critics and rivals.

To do the job, the CNN Belief Blog has enlisted CNN’s international newsgathering team, with correspondents, producers, and writers all contributing. We’ll also be posting the opinions of guest bloggers and will feature regular posts from religion scholar and author Stephen Prothero, an expert at revealing the hidden faith angles that explain so much about American life and world geopolitics.

You can read the full introduction here;  or better yet, visit the May 24th post containing a three-minuite video tour of the new site.   You’ll find the expected bias toward U.S. stories, but also a fairly wide worldview, presented in a clear, clean and straightforward manner.  (Many CNN-staffers attend Evangelical churches; as Atlanta is one of the most “churched” cities in the world.)

If you are a blogger who wants to stay current to breaking news, or are simply a reader who enjoys uncovering the spiritual significance behind some of the headlines, you will want to bookmark CNN Belief and check it daily.

On this blog, I’ll do the same, and I expect at least one CNN story to turn up in the Wednesday Link Lists here weekly.