From Publisher's Weekly:
Religion Newswriters Meet in Denver; Books a Major Focus
By Marcia Nelson and Lynn Garrett
Publishers were prominent among the sponsors who courted the nation’s religion journalists, gathered in Denver September 23–25 to learn, network, and congratulate one another on still being employed.
Offering more proof that niche-focused shows and conferences make sense, attendance numbers were up at this year’s RNA conference; attendance of 190 (members, exhibitors, speakers, and spouses), including seven journalists from abroad, surpassed last year’s figure of 175.The association now has 573 members, down from a peak of 584 in 2008.
Many of the conference sessions were book based. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam and his coauthor, University of Notre Dame political science professor David Campbell, introduced findings from their hefty American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (Simon & Schuster, Oct.; see PW’s review) characterizing America as religiously devout, diverse, and tolerant.
At a luncheon sponsored by Jossey-Bass, Donald Kraybill (Amish Grace), the country’s go-to expert on the Amish, spoke about his new book, The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World, coauthored by Steven Nolt and David Weaver-Zercher (Jossey-Bass, Oct.; see PW’s review). Kraybill called the book the first ever focused on Amish religion and practice rather than their unique lifestyle. The book has been featured on CNN.com, and the authors will post a guest commentary on the Washington Post “On Faith” blog next month.
FaithWords hosted the Saturday night awards banquet, featuring Philip Yancey’s latest book, What Good Is God? Yancey spoke, centering his remarks on his own experience as a journalist. Other publishers bringing authors were Doubleday Religion, HarperOne, and Baylor University Press, who all also exhibited, as did Westminster John Knox and Jewish Lights/SkyLight Paths. B&H Publishing sponsored a session on Christian book sales phenoms, including its own 4.5-million seller, The Love Dare (2008).
Preceding the main conference was a full day of sessions on Bible translation to familiarize journalists with the process and history of translation, information that will be useful for reporting on the 400th anniversary of the King James translation and the update of the NIV translation that is due in 2011.
At a panel on how to drive online traffic, Alana B. Elias Kornfeld, senior editor at the Huffington Post, who recently launched the site’s religion area, said Google analytics demonstrated that people used Google to search for religion books.
Johanna Inwood, marketing manager and publicist for Random House’s WaterBrook Multnomah division based in Colorado Springs, Colo., told RBL that Doubleday Religion would “return to its Catholic roots,” and that body-mind-spirit and Buddhist titles that do not fit that emphasis—such as books by the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra—will be moved over to the Harmony imprint. Doubleday Religion editor-in-chief Trace Murphy will acquire for both imprints.
RNA meets next year in Durham, N.C., with pre-conference sessions at Duke University.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Encouraging News from Religion Editor of Publisher's Weekly
Editor's Note
Our readers know that book publishing has been among the businesses hit hard by the recession and by the uncertainty caused by technological changes. Things have been even tougher for journalists, as staff and pages shrink at magazines and, especially, newspapers.
Just a few years ago the religion sections of dailies were thriving, but recently many of the editors and reporters who worked on them have seen their sections and jobs go away, though many now cover the beat as freelancers.
This year’s Religion Newswriters conference, covered in this issue, brought some hopeful signs. Aside from the veterans who were there, I saw many young faces, attendance was up, and the conversations were more upbeat.
The country struggles these days with the need for better understanding of Islam and for fresh insights across the faith spectrum, as the practice of religions in America changes rapidly. Journalists with deep and broad knowledge of this complex subject will be needed more than ever. Online or in print, religion will be a hot topic. —Lynn Garrett
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
MomSense Magazine Continues in Print
MomSense Magazine Continues in Print as MOPS International and Christianity Today International Complete Publishing Agreement
DENVER, Sept. 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- MomSense magazine continues to reach over 90,000 mothers of preschoolers as MOPS International resumes full responsibility for advertising sales, editorial and publishing following the completion of a five-year agreement with Christianity Today International (CTI). The last issue published and distributed by CTI will be the November/December 2010 issue.
MomSense magazine is the premier benefit of the MOPS International Membership. Interested advertisers can contact Sponsor Relations at Advertising@MOPS.org for more information and assistance. The current MOPS Media Kit with MomSense advertising rates and specifications, and all our media opportunities, can be viewed online at MOPS.org/sponsors, click Advertise in MomSense. Ad reservations can be made quickly and easily using our automated online system at MOPS.org/sponsorlogin if you have an established advertising relationship through MOPS International.
Christianity Today International offers a broad array of integrated advertising opportunities through their publications, websites, blogs, and newsletters, connecting you with key Christian audiences -- pastors, church leaders, influential decision makers, and active and involved men, women, parents and teens.
DENVER, Sept. 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- MomSense magazine continues to reach over 90,000 mothers of preschoolers as MOPS International resumes full responsibility for advertising sales, editorial and publishing following the completion of a five-year agreement with Christianity Today International (CTI). The last issue published and distributed by CTI will be the November/December 2010 issue.
MomSense magazine is the premier benefit of the MOPS International Membership. Interested advertisers can contact Sponsor Relations at Advertising@MOPS.org for more information and assistance. The current MOPS Media Kit with MomSense advertising rates and specifications, and all our media opportunities, can be viewed online at MOPS.org/sponsors, click Advertise in MomSense. Ad reservations can be made quickly and easily using our automated online system at MOPS.org/sponsorlogin if you have an established advertising relationship through MOPS International.
Christianity Today International offers a broad array of integrated advertising opportunities through their publications, websites, blogs, and newsletters, connecting you with key Christian audiences -- pastors, church leaders, influential decision makers, and active and involved men, women, parents and teens.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
A Billboard-Sized Oops!
South Bend ad for Walorski has grammatical error
Election season is in full swing around the country, but some are so excited about the all-important election that they're forgetting the small things.
A billboard on the south side of South Bend shows support for Republican Jackie Walorski's race for the second congressional district.
But there's a grammatical error. The sign reads “Joe your fired.” That’s the wrong use of the word "your."
It's unclear whether the billboard was put up by Walorski's campaign.
Election season is in full swing around the country, but some are so excited about the all-important election that they're forgetting the small things.
A billboard on the south side of South Bend shows support for Republican Jackie Walorski's race for the second congressional district.
But there's a grammatical error. The sign reads “Joe your fired.” That’s the wrong use of the word "your."
It's unclear whether the billboard was put up by Walorski's campaign.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Friday is National Punctuation Day
Friday is National Punctuation Day
The apostrophe is the most misused.
By COLETTE BANCROFT, St. Petersburg Times
Many of us are worried already. As a former English teacher and copy editor, I despair for humanity when I open an e-mail that bristles with so many exclamation points I can hardly make out the words between them. And those are just the news releases about library events.
Just last week, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten declared the English language dead, the coup de grace delivered by an unnecessary apostrophe.
But don't bury English yet. People are fighting to revive its proper use. National Punctuation Day was the brainchild of Jeff Rubin, a California newsletter writer who founded it in 2004 as "a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis."
Rubin and his wife, Norma, maintain a website, nationalpunctuationday.com.
Then there is Jeff Deck's mission to bring America back to perfect punctuation, at least in public. "It's a question of people building their apostrophic confidence," says Deck, co-author of "The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World One Correction at a Time."
Deck, 30, an editor who lives in New Hampshire, has a hands-on approach to raising awareness of poor punctuation. A couple of years ago, he and his friend Benjamin Herson, a bookseller, set off on a 2 ½-month road trip in search of errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar in public signs.
The most common punctuation error? "The poor apostrophe is the most misused and put-upon. People are always throwing it into words where it's not needed, especially plurals," Deck says, citing signs directing people to "Restroom's" and offering "Apple's for sale."
"Almost as common is the apostrophe being left out where it's needed.
Deck doesn't blame vanishing punctuation skills on e-mail and texting, saying those modes of communication "get a bad rap. It's very easy to blame them."
Roy Peter Clark loves punctuation so much that the cover of his new book, "The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English," features a giant golden semicolon. The senior scholar at the Poynter Institute devotes several chapters to punctuation, emphasizing what a valuable tool it can be.
In "Reclaim the exclamation point," he lays out the parameters of opinion on that exuberant but controversial mark. On the one hand, master thriller author Elmore Leonard tells him, "You are allowed only three in every one hundred thousand words of prose." On the other, a friend sends Clark an e-mail with a six-word sentence followed by 11 exclamation points.
I'm on Team Leonard, but Clark is somewhere between the two extremes, calling the exclamation point "the thinking writer's emoticon." Clearly it's a mark of punctuation he favors: "My next book is called 'Help! for Writers.' "
The apostrophe is the most misused.
By COLETTE BANCROFT, St. Petersburg Times
Many of us are worried already. As a former English teacher and copy editor, I despair for humanity when I open an e-mail that bristles with so many exclamation points I can hardly make out the words between them. And those are just the news releases about library events.
Just last week, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten declared the English language dead, the coup de grace delivered by an unnecessary apostrophe.
But don't bury English yet. People are fighting to revive its proper use. National Punctuation Day was the brainchild of Jeff Rubin, a California newsletter writer who founded it in 2004 as "a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis."
Rubin and his wife, Norma, maintain a website, nationalpunctuationday.com.
Then there is Jeff Deck's mission to bring America back to perfect punctuation, at least in public. "It's a question of people building their apostrophic confidence," says Deck, co-author of "The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World One Correction at a Time."
Deck, 30, an editor who lives in New Hampshire, has a hands-on approach to raising awareness of poor punctuation. A couple of years ago, he and his friend Benjamin Herson, a bookseller, set off on a 2 ½-month road trip in search of errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar in public signs.
The most common punctuation error? "The poor apostrophe is the most misused and put-upon. People are always throwing it into words where it's not needed, especially plurals," Deck says, citing signs directing people to "Restroom's" and offering "Apple's for sale."
"Almost as common is the apostrophe being left out where it's needed.
Deck doesn't blame vanishing punctuation skills on e-mail and texting, saying those modes of communication "get a bad rap. It's very easy to blame them."
Roy Peter Clark loves punctuation so much that the cover of his new book, "The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English," features a giant golden semicolon. The senior scholar at the Poynter Institute devotes several chapters to punctuation, emphasizing what a valuable tool it can be.
In "Reclaim the exclamation point," he lays out the parameters of opinion on that exuberant but controversial mark. On the one hand, master thriller author Elmore Leonard tells him, "You are allowed only three in every one hundred thousand words of prose." On the other, a friend sends Clark an e-mail with a six-word sentence followed by 11 exclamation points.
I'm on Team Leonard, but Clark is somewhere between the two extremes, calling the exclamation point "the thinking writer's emoticon." Clearly it's a mark of punctuation he favors: "My next book is called 'Help! for Writers.' "
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Interesting New Degree!
From New York Times:
New Journalism Degree to Emphasize Start-Ups
By TANZINA VEGA
The Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York wants to capitalize on some of the shifts that have rocked traditional journalism — and traditional journalists — with the creation of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism and a new master of arts degree in entrepreneurial journalism, which the school will announce on Monday.
Entrepreneurial journalism, broadly speaking, simply refers to pulling journalism, business and technology closer together. CUNY already offers a course in entrepreneurial journalism, and this new master’s program will extend the traditional degree program to two years from 18 months. The courses in the program will focus on the business of managing media, and the study and creation of new media business models, and it will offer students apprenticeships at New York City start-ups.
“We’re all very concerned about sustaining quality journalism, and we think the future of journalism is going to be entrepreneurial,” said Stephen B. Shepard, the founding dean of the school and a former editor in chief of BusinessWeek.
The school will also offer a certificate in entrepreneurial journalism for midcareer journalists “who have worked in traditional mainstream media, who understand they need new skills and will come back to get them,” Mr. Shepard said.
The journalism school offers a converged curriculum in which students are able to study media across all platforms, including digital, broadcast and print. Students also choose a subject of concentration in arts, business, urban or international reporting. The center will be led by Jeff Jarvis, an associate professor and the director of the school’s interactive journalism program, and will reside in the school’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
The $10 million center will receive $3 million in funding from The Tow Foundation, $3 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and additional grants and contributions from the journalism school. The first degrees are expected to be awarded in the spring of 2012.
New Journalism Degree to Emphasize Start-Ups
By TANZINA VEGA
The Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York wants to capitalize on some of the shifts that have rocked traditional journalism — and traditional journalists — with the creation of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism and a new master of arts degree in entrepreneurial journalism, which the school will announce on Monday.
Entrepreneurial journalism, broadly speaking, simply refers to pulling journalism, business and technology closer together. CUNY already offers a course in entrepreneurial journalism, and this new master’s program will extend the traditional degree program to two years from 18 months. The courses in the program will focus on the business of managing media, and the study and creation of new media business models, and it will offer students apprenticeships at New York City start-ups.
“We’re all very concerned about sustaining quality journalism, and we think the future of journalism is going to be entrepreneurial,” said Stephen B. Shepard, the founding dean of the school and a former editor in chief of BusinessWeek.
The school will also offer a certificate in entrepreneurial journalism for midcareer journalists “who have worked in traditional mainstream media, who understand they need new skills and will come back to get them,” Mr. Shepard said.
The journalism school offers a converged curriculum in which students are able to study media across all platforms, including digital, broadcast and print. Students also choose a subject of concentration in arts, business, urban or international reporting. The center will be led by Jeff Jarvis, an associate professor and the director of the school’s interactive journalism program, and will reside in the school’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
The $10 million center will receive $3 million in funding from The Tow Foundation, $3 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and additional grants and contributions from the journalism school. The first degrees are expected to be awarded in the spring of 2012.
Does the Name of This Author Sound Familiar?
Book depicts intense internal White House dissension, says aides doubt Obama's Afghan strategy
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's top advisers spent much of the past 20 months arguing about policy and turf, according to a new book, with some top members of his national security team doubting the president's strategy in Afghanistan will work.
The book, "Obama's Wars," by journalist Bob Woodward, says Obama aides were deeply divided over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there. Obama's top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.
According to the book, Obama said, "I have two years with the public on this" and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation in the Afghanistan war.
"I want an exit strategy," he said at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joe Biden to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings.
While Obama ultimately rejected the alternative plan, the book says, he set a withdrawal timetable because, "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party."
Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president's Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing the president's review of the Afghanistan war did not "add up" to the decision he made. Richard Holbrooke, the president's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted as saying of the strategy, "It can't work," according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the book before its scheduled publication date, scheduled for next week.
Obama was among administration officials that Woodward interviewed for the book. The Times, which posted its article on its website Tuesday night, said the White House had no comment on the book. The Washington Post also reported on the book on its website late Tuesday night.
Although the internal divisions described by Woodward have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense than previously known and offers new details, the Times said.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's top advisers spent much of the past 20 months arguing about policy and turf, according to a new book, with some top members of his national security team doubting the president's strategy in Afghanistan will work.
The book, "Obama's Wars," by journalist Bob Woodward, says Obama aides were deeply divided over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there. Obama's top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.
According to the book, Obama said, "I have two years with the public on this" and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation in the Afghanistan war.
"I want an exit strategy," he said at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joe Biden to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings.
While Obama ultimately rejected the alternative plan, the book says, he set a withdrawal timetable because, "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party."
Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president's Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing the president's review of the Afghanistan war did not "add up" to the decision he made. Richard Holbrooke, the president's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted as saying of the strategy, "It can't work," according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the book before its scheduled publication date, scheduled for next week.
Obama was among administration officials that Woodward interviewed for the book. The Times, which posted its article on its website Tuesday night, said the White House had no comment on the book. The Washington Post also reported on the book on its website late Tuesday night.
Although the internal divisions described by Woodward have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense than previously known and offers new details, the Times said.
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