Sunday, February 12, 2012

What it takes to get Baptist Press off the sidelines

Apparently, it takes a prominent state newspaper editor writing an opinion piece about calvinism (the link is to Peter Lumpkins' blog where he puts Harris' entire article, with permission).

Just a single day is all it took for Baptist Press to chase down every SBCer that Harris' mentioned in connection with his article, "The Calvinists are Here" which BP's Erin Roach wrote up in Encroachment of Calvinism' concerns editor.

I admit to being a Baptist Press watcher and reader and they seldom touch anything that is unpleasant, critical of the SBC, or uncomfortable. Don't look for much from BP on Phil Roberts' resignation as Midwestern Seminary head, for example.

But they nearly melted their rusty journalistic gears getting in action after Harris wrote this article.

I've said for years that if you want a good coverage of Baptist news, it is necessary to read Associated Baptist Press in addition to Baptist Press. You would be an ignorant SBCer if you stuck with BP only.

Gerald Harris, by the way, is editor of the Georgia state paper, The Christian Index. The Index alone has provided much of the coverage of the North American Mission Board and all of its debacles and disasters of the past decade or so.

Gerald Harris might not be a journalist, his background is as a successful pastor, and he might not be the most elegant writer, but he has seen to it that The Index does some authentic news coverage, something rare at BP.

...but it's good to see our in-house news/pr outfit with some rumblings of real journalism and reporting again.

1 comment:

Jonathan said...

I'm not sure what's worse here, Harris' argumentation or that this is what it takes to get BP to dig in to something.