No wonder they're "downsizing"

I heard on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" this morning that apparently the New York Times is having to reduce the size of the paper in a cost-cutting measure. If this is any indication of the quality of the journalism they produce these days, it's no surprise why they're looking to cut costs:

Exactly one week after Mr. Schultz presided over Sunday worship at his home church here, he gave a sermon in the vast arena of the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. Instead of the farmers, factory workers and tradesmen who typify his regular congregation, the audience for his denunciation of the Iraq war consisted of the self-proclaimed "netroots" attending Yearly Kos, the annual political and media convention organized by the Daily Kos Web site.

For three years, Mr. Schultz has supplied the voice of religion for Daily Kos, an epicenter of left-liberal activity with an otherwise fiercely secular bent. In 2004, Mr. Schultz began fielding prayer requests every Sunday night as part of a Daily Kos feature called "Brothers and Sisters." A year later, Daily Kos's founder, Markos Moulitsas, let Mr. Schultz spin off a formally connected online community, Street Prophets.

In 4.3 million page views since then, Mr. Schultz's readers have found comparatively little balm in Gilead. True to the take-no-prisoners style of blogosphere discourse, Street Prophets traffics more in calumny and condemnation, though with an extremely learned theological intelligence behind it.

Let me say, first, that I'm thrilled to see Dan get this kind of media attention, if only because it may finally begin to dent the public perception that religion somehow belongs to those who describe themselves as "conservatives," and that it only comes in evangelical/fundamentalist flavors. And I'm sure that Dan and Mrs. Pastor will be buying extra copies of the Times and sending them to all their relatives.

That said, however, the characterization that Samuel Freedman makes of the Street Prophets community in that last paragraph suggests to me (and I've been a member of the blog virtually since its inception, so I'm in a reasonably good position to know) that he spent virtually no time there--and what time he did spend was most likely in a very narrowly drawn sample of postings. Because while I've seen plenty of extreme erudition and theological intelligence on Prophecy Street (as we locals often call it), I can't say I've seen much in the way of either calumny or condemnation. It's a nice alliterative turn of phrase, but it totally fails to describe the blog I participate on.

I said as much to the editors of the Times earlier this evening:

Editor:

I must take exception to the misleading characterization made by Samuel Freedman regarding the discourse at Street Prophets in the above-referenced article. I have been a member of the Street Prophets community virtually from the moment it was founded, and while I have certainly seen many examples of what Mr. Freedman described as "extremely learned" posts displaying "theological intelligence," I'm afraid that I've missed anything that looked remotely like "calumny and condemnation." In fact, I have to wonder whether anyone who could so mischaracterize the interactions among members of Street Prophets spent more than a few minutes perusing a very selective number of postings--receiving therefrom a severely distorted perception of the community, its members, and the way they interact with one another.

Religion is one of the touchiest subjects in all of human life, followed closely by politics. We're warned by our parents, our teachers, and virtually every etiquette manual ever printed to avoid discussing either subject in public--yet the intersection of faith and politics is the raison d'être of Street Prophets and, on the whole, it is my opinion that we have managed to negotiate a safe and tolerant path through the minefield.

Street Prophets is home to people of literally every faith and creed under the sun. Our members range from fundamentalist evangelicals to Buddhists, from Roman Catholics such as myself to pagans, Protestants of all varieties. Even atheists and agnostics are welcomed and valued members of the community.

The one thing which the community will not tolerate is exactly what Mr. Freedman accuses us of trafficking in. The one requirement on Street Prophets is to treat one another with respect. That is not to say that we all agree on everything--it is self-evident that we do not--but bullying, mischaracterizing, and falsely accusing other Street Prophets is not allowed. Our discourse may grow heated from time to time, as is only to be expected when dealing with ideals and beliefs about ultimate things. But at the end of the day, it's all about being a community: a community that prays* together and supports one another to the best of its ability, given that the members of that community are scattered all across the world.

It's a pity that Mr. Freedman couldn't or didn't spend enough time among us to have noticed that salient fact. As we would say on the blog, no cookies for him--though he's welcome to come back and hang around the place to get a better picture of who we are and what we do. We don't hold a grudge.

(*meditate, hold in good and active thought, as we are wont to say on the blog, acknowledging that not all of our members are comfortable with the more overtly religious term "pray")

Comments

[Bryan]

Michael, everyone knows "there is no truth in Pravda, and no news in Izvestia."

The party line is that blogs are all foul-mouth haters and anarchists attempting to overthrown the established order.

They stop acting like a newspaper, reduce their news gathering resources, and can't figure out why their circulation is dropping.