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Booksscrambling when the scandal couldno longer be ignored. To his credit,he began doggedly chasing the LosAngeles Archdiocese’s wrongdoings,which would culminate in the largestsettlement in the nation with victimsof childhood sexual abuse.His coverage of the Catholic scandalthen opened up stories about othercontroversies—from Mormon excommunicationsto a two-part series detailingthe lavish spending by foundersof the Trinity Broadcasting Network,a worldwide television empire basedin Orange County.During this time, Lobdell went frompromoting religion to deciding it washis mission to right its wrongs. “TheBody of Christ was sick,” he writes.“My investigative reporting skillscould help uncover the infection andpromote the healing. I was sure thishad been part of the Lord’s plan forme all along.”Guess what happened next? As thetitle suggests, Lobdell loses his faith.He had blurred the lines between hisprofession with his personal beliefs socompletely that covering the humanfoils of organized religion and its byproductswas too much to bear. Beforeleaving the Los Angeles Times last year,Lobdell wrote a front page confessionof this journey, which led to him towrite this book. He is a compelling,gifted writer. His conversational styleserved him well in journalism as itdoes on the pages of his book. But hiswriting skills provide little solace formy indignation and my sadness, forhim and for my beloved profession.Lobdell is right about one thing.When he began thinking about becominga religion reporter, editorsregarded the beat as “an antiquatedpart of newspaper tradition.” Today,editors are killing the beat or scalingit back dramatically. One excuse givenis the results of marketing surveys,which apparently show little readerinterest in religion coverage. Sinceroughly eight out of 10 people saythey believe in God, and about halfthat number practices a faith regularly,I have a hunch the problem liesmore in how the questions are beingasked than what the surveys have sofar revealed.Regretfully, I fear Lobdell’s bookmight give editors more ammunitionto distance their newsrooms fromcovering religion. As for readers, Iworry it will give them another reasonto lose faith in our ability to informand equip them in an unfettered, independentvoice. On the other hand,if the pendulum swings back towardincreased interest in covering whatpeople believe and how they behavebased on those beliefs, perhaps hisbook will serve as a compass pointingtoward which reporters to assignto this beat—and which to put on adifferent one. Sandi Dolbee was the religion and ethicseditor of The San Diego Union-Tribuneand a one-time president of theReligion Newswriters Association. Sheis a two-time winner of the ReligionReporter of the Year award and hasbeen honored by the American Associationof Sunday and Feature Editors,the San Diego chapter of the Society ofProfessional Journalists, and the SanDiego Press Club.Religion and the Press: Always Complicated, Now ChaoticIn a time of a blogging explosion, ‘… the idea of a coherent mainstream journalisticidentity is in this era of old media implosion on the way out.’BY MARK SILKBlind Spot: When JournalistsDon’t Get ReligionPaul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, RobertaGreen Ahmanson, EditorsOxford University Press. 240 Pages.For the past 30 years, a staple ofthe culture wars has been the notionthat journalists in general, and elitejournalists in particular, are eitherhostile to religion or ignorant of it or(most likely) both. By this account,they belong to the “knowledge class”responsible for leading American societyto godless moral relativism. Nomatter that journalists are, accordingto the best surveys, as religious asAmericans generally. No matter that,beginning in the mid-1990’s, newspapersdevoted more space and staffingto religion coverage than ever before.The antireligion trope is a conservativearticle of faith.A collection of essays, “Blind Spot:When Journalists Don’t Get Religion,”is the latest and, I dare to hope, lasthurrah of this misbegotten conviction.That’s not because I believe the culturewars are at an end, though they maybe winding down. It’s because the ideaof a coherent mainstream journalisticidentity is in this era of old mediaimplosion on the way out.That news seems not to havepenetrated the consciousness of thebook’s essayists, most of whom areacademics and think-tank denizens,though here and there a professionalscribbler can be found. Their premiseis that the robust journalism ofyesteryear is still hale and hearty butNieman Reports | Summer 2009 83