Blogs and Web 2.0
Trying, and Failing, to Measure Religion Online
First off, Happy First Birthday to ReligionWriter — this website went live a year ago today, featuring my interview with religion journalist and blogger Gary Stern. The day I launched the site was, of course, the day of the Virginia Tech massacre, so that week also featured my interviews with religion experts on evil and [...]
16Apr2008 | Andrea Useem | 2 comments | ContinuedFaith on Facebook: In Search of the Killer Religion App
If any of you know me personally, you know that I am a borderline Facebook fanatic. A late adopter, I joined less than a year ago while reporting an article on the Virginia Tech massacre: The story was unfolding online, so I joined Facebook to look for sources. To my amazement, someone I knew friended [...]
17Feb2008 | Andrea Useem | 4 comments | Continued“To Make an Enemy of 500 Million People is Ludicrous”
In the last post, ReligionWriter was speaking with video and text blogger Amar Bakshi about the religious ideas he found while traveling in Britain.
In this segment, Bakshi shares the insights he gained as a roving blogger in Pakistan to explain why Osama bin Laden is so popular there, and how differing perceptions of his own [...]
British Divided Over Religion’s Role in Public Life: Q+A with Amar Bakshi
Amar Bakshi has what for many people would be a dream job: the 23-year-old recent college graduate travels the world, capturing the thoughts of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people in word and image. Bakshi’s text and video blog, “How The World Sees America,” appears on Washington.Post.Newsweek.Interactive’s foreign affairs blog, Post Global. This summer, Bakshi traveled to [...]
14Sep2007 | Andrea Useem | 1 comment | ContinuedGod’s Social Networks: Evangelicals Leading the Way Online
If you’re someone who believes life was better before Google and that “face-to-face interaction” is the gold standard of human relationships then read no further: You’ll only shake your head and be vaguely depressed to learn that people are now “going to church” through their computers and creating virtual faith communities online. Surely this is [...]
21Aug2007 | Andrea Useem | 4 comments | Continued“Some Days, I Feel Like a Barnacle:” The Pace Car of Religion News Blogging
When the Dallas Morning News’ award-winning religion section, one of the country’s only stand-alone faith sections, folded back into the rest of the paper in January, 2007, due to insufficient ad revenue, observers in the field worried about the decline of religion journalism. Wrote Martin Marty: “We have reason to shed a tear” because, in [...]
25Jul2007 | Andrea Useem | 3 comments | ContinuedIs Your Church Ready to Blog?
Walk into almost any church, and the hierarchy is visually clear: up front on a stage, pulpit or podium stands the person ready to impart wisdom. Sitting quietly in rows are the worshipers, hoping for a good sermon. Why does this arrangement sound familiar? It’s exactly the structure used to describe “old media” like newspapers: [...]
29Jun2007 | Andrea Useem | 5 comments | ContinuedAn Independent Muslim-American Press? Texas Entreprenuer Is Making It Happen
As a father of two and a full-time real estate developer in Austin, Texas, Shahed Amanullah has also been able to squeeze in a side-project over the last few years: opening up the American Muslim community to debate and criticism.
After 9/11 attacks, the American-born Amanullah, now 39, watched his community “circle the wagons” under a barrage [...]
Sally Quinn: On Faith Blog Is Opening Minds — and Growing Fast
(Below: Sally Quinn, courtesy of wpni.com.)
Started by two leading journalists with little background in religion,‡ On Faith, the multi-contributor blog at Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive, has rocketed to prominence since it launched in November, 2006. Although washingtonpost.com said it does not have data on unique visitors to On Faith and its twin blog, PostGlobal, a similarly [...]
Blogs: Top Religion Reporter Says Blogging is Exciting, Draining and Obligatory
Gary Stern, religion reporter at the Gannett-owned Journal News, which serves three New York counties, launched his blog, On Religion, last September on the newspaper’s website, LoHud.com. Posting three to four times a day, Gary, who won the Templeton Reporter of the Year award in 2006, said his blog gets about 7,000 hits a month, [...]
16Apr2007 | Andrea Useem | 3 comments | Continued