Spencer Tracy, courtesy of TCM Photo Gallery. (Everything I ever needed to know about reporting I learned from the movies. Sort of.)

There have been reductions in the number of reporters who write about religion full-time at all of the nation’s biggest newspapers [...]. The surviving newspaper religion sections are getting smaller. And at many small and mid-sized newspapers, reporters now juggle coverage of religion with other, often unrelated, subjects, and religion often gets short shrift.

So wrote Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe last month, in an article about the annual meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association entitled “Religion reporting: An endangered beat?”  He went on to note that on-line writing about the subject, especially blogging, has increased, but that

Much of the on-line work is focused on a particular faith group, and is written from a particular ideological or theological perspective, which differentiates it from traditional religion journalism. At the most recent denominational…

“Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion–we protect religion. And talk about a lifestyle choice. That is absolutely a choice. Gay people don’t choose to be gay. At what age did you choose to not be gay?” –Jon Stewart, to guest Mike Huckabee, on The Daily Show

Jon Stewart, courtesy Comedy Central

Last night I watched for a second time the exchange between Jon Stewart and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on the issue of gay marriage. You can see the full episode online. Stewart and Huckabee are both smart, genial, and telegenic, and they seem to have developed a friendly rapport over the course of Huckabee’s many appearances on the show. That apparent rapport makes the confrontation here more genuine and interesting than most of these staged showdowns on cable news.

It got me to thinking again about the basic issues involved,…