My ancestors defined the “golden mean” as the middle ground between extremes; moderation in all things. A few thousand years later, Goldilocks and three bears made a similar discovery about ideal food temperature and furniture comfort.
This Greek philosophy seems to have no place in 21st century journalism, with our ever-expanding universe of media outlets — mainstream, partisan, corporate, independent, monthly, weekly, hourly, etc. — fighting for fragmented audiences, giving people what they want vs. what they need (ice cream vs. broccoli) and struggling to survive budget cuts, technological advances and shrinking attention spans. It’s an obvious issue for political news, especially during a presidential campaign, but the “well curve” applies to religion news, too.
I’ve been blogging here for nearly two years, aggregating from an RSS feed of several dozen secular-to-religious, conservative-to-progressive, multimedia faith news sources. I thought this would be a good time to review them, taking into account your thoughts on which ones you like, which ones you take with a pillar of salt, and feedback on any I should drop or add:
- BibleBeltBlogger
- Bill’s ‘Faith Matters’ Weblog
- Blogging Religiously
- Bold Faith Type
- Catholic News Agency
- Christianity Today Politics
- CNN Belief Blog
- Episcopal Cafe
- Faith & Reason – USA Today
- FaithWorld – Reuters
- GetReligion
- Huffington Post Religion
- JTA – Jewish & Israel News
- Killing the Buddha
- Muslimah Media Watch
- MuslimMatters.org
- NCR Today
- NYT > Religion and Belief
- On Faith – The Washington Post
- Peter Berger’s Blog
- Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
- Religion & Ethics Newsweekly | PBS
- Religion Clause
- Religion News Blog
- ReligionDispatches
- RNS Blog
- Spiritual Politics
- Texas Faith – Dallas Morning News
- The Religion World – Orlando Sentinel
- The Seeker
- ReligiousLeftLaw.com
- Whispers in the Loggia
- Yahoo! News: Religion News
(There are even more, if you count Twitter feeds I follow and websites or publications I read less frequently. But this is a good start.)
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.