A study was conducted to determine what attitudes Indiana religion editors and reporters hold toward religion news and what attitude patterns exist among them.Using Q Methodology, this study explored the attitudes of religion reporters and editors at 22 Indiana daily newspapers. Newspapers included in the study had a religion reporter or editor who covered local religion news.The concourse for the study was developed by using statements from Ranly's 1977 study and from articles from trade and scholarly journals. The Q-sample included a total of 54 statements related to personal religious beliefs, the state of religion news and working as a journalist.The subjects completed a questionnaire, which included questions about their professional and religious background, and interviews were conducted with the subjects.The typical Indiana religion reporter was: a Caucasian female who had worked as a journalist for less than 10 years, who had held the position of religion reporter for less than five years, who held a bachelor's degree in journalism or English, and who had at least one college religion course. She had exposure to religion while growing up, is now involved in religious activities, and attends church weekly.QMETHOD software was used to tabulate the Q-sorts, and the investigator determined that two factors could be drawn out from the results. Hypothetical reporter types were labeled as "moderate" and "traditional." There was a high correlation between the two factors. Moderates were more news-oriented in their approach. They believe that religion news should be covered like any other news topic. Traditionalists were more faith-oriented. They believe that their faith and their jobs are not conflicting. / Department of Journalism
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/186920 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Gunter, Heather M. |
| Contributors | Popovich, Mark N. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | iii, 76 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-us-in |
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