Religion reporting under siege

In the latest issue of "Religion in the News,'' Andrew Walsh takes a look at the impact of the turmoil in the news business on the religion beat. "The religion beat, which had been growing fast in the 1990s, has indeed suffered collateral damage,'' writes Walsh, a former religion writer for the Hartford Courant.

The journal, which is published by the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, also takes an interesting look at press coverage of the immigration problems at Agriprocessors, the kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa. "More than a few observers (none of whom wanted to go on the record) have noted that New York papers have a reputation of shying away from stories that cast ultra-Orthodox Jews in a bad light,'' writes Ronald C. Kiener, director of the Jewish Studies Program at Trinity. "Coverage of the thornier aspects of the story fell to the Jewish press."