For Columbia Journalism Review, Gal Beckerman points out the disjunction between journalists’ and the public’s attitudes toward religion. She asks whether journalism’s mandate is “to offer not just a simple play-by-play of reality, but also to explore what stirs, inspires, pushes people to action?” (Via Bookslut.)

It’s a question that’s preoccupied me lately, although I’ve been thinking about it in the context of fiction rather than journalism. Oddly, I raised more or less this very issue in a writers-on-writing interview with novelist A.L. Kennedy that I’ll post tomorrow or next week.