Does religion news get “ghettoized” when it’s published once a week in a special section? Does religion news need to be more integrated into other sections?
The answer to this question differs depending on the newspaper. In some places, religion sections showcase the local writers’ efforts and the journalists are so busy trying to keep it filled that they have little time for anything else. In other cases, religion sections consist mostly of listings of religious events or they use wire copy of religion briefs and let the local reporter write for A-1.
Ideally, papers would have a great weekly section, but also would break religion news that could run in the local or metro section of the paper. And in fact this does happen in some cases. But this takes considerable staffing. In more cases, the reporters may work on a great section, but have little time for anything else. So in places in which there are too few religion reporters (which is most places), that reporter has to fill a weekly section AND write for the run of the paper. This is an all-too-common scenario.
Sections make a lot of sense and give a visibility to religion news that doesn’t generally exist at papers without sections. In some places, they are well-liked by readers and help assure a certain level of religion news at that outlet. Measuring how readers view religion news is very difficult if a paper does not have a section.
Realistically, most religion news appearing in sections is “featurized,” so getting rid of a section is no guarantee that there will be more news on A-1. Most likely there will just be less religion news if a paper gets rid of a section. Without a section, many papers do not feel the need to have a beat specialist and the best religion news comes from those specialists.
