Presenting religion as journalism's silent partner, From Yahweh to Yahoo!provides a fresh and surprising view of the religious impulses at work in contemporary newsrooms. Focusing on how the history of religion in the United States entwines with the growth of the media, Doug Underwood argues that American journalists draw from the nation's moral and religious heritage and operate, in important ways, as personifications of the old religious virtues.

Underwood traces religion's influence on mass communication from the biblical prophets to the Protestant Reformation, from the muckraker and Social Gospel campaigns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the modern age of mass media. While forces have pushed journalists away from identifying themselves with religion, they still approach such secular topics as science, technology, and psychology in reverential ways. Underwood thoughtful analysis covers the press's formulaic coverage of spiritual experience, its failure to cover new and non-Christian religions in America, and the complicity of the mainstream media in launching the religious broadcasting movement.

| PART 1: THE RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF THE MASS MEDIA 1. Prophetic Journalism: Moral Outrage and the News 19 2. The Profits of Reform: Printers, Capitalists, and the Priesthood of Believers 33 3. Skeptics of Faith or Faith in Skepticism? Enlightening the Journalistic Mind 47 4. Mystics, Idealists, and Utopians: Journalism and the Romantic Tradition 61 5. Muckraking the Nation's Conscience: Journalists and the Social Gospel 76 6. Mencken, Monkeys, and Modernity: A New Metaphysic for the Newsroom 88 7. Pragmatism and the "Facts" of Religious Experience: The Model for a Synthesis 102 PART 2: RESEARCH, RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, AND THE ETHICS OF THE PRESS 8. Trusting Their Guts: The Moral Compass of a Doubters' Profession 117 9. "I Will Show You My Faith by What I Do": A Survey of the Religious Beliefs of Journalists and Journalists' Faith Put into Action 130 10. Religion, Morality, and Professional Values: A Study of the Ethical Sources of Today's Journalists 148 PART 3: SECULARISM AND THE NEWSROOM SEARCH FOR SUBSTITUTE FAITHS 11. The Cult of Science and the Scientifically Challenged Press 165 12. The Mind of the Inquiring Reporter: Psychology and the Science of the Soul 179 13. The Press, Politics, and Religion in the Public Squal-e 192 14. Foundations of Sand: Technology Worship and the Internet 206 15. The Gospel of Public Journalism: The News,roonm Communitarians and the Search for Civic Virtue 216 PART 4: JOURNALISM AFTER JESUS 16. Jesus without Journalists: Miracles and Mysteries, Minus Media Reports 233 17. Visions of Mary and the Less Than Visionar y Plress: Religious Apparitions in the Framing of the Modern Media 249 18. Proselytizing and Profits: The Growth of'l levangelism and the Collaboration of the Mainstream Press 253 19. Pluralism and the Press's Blind Spots: lThe Coverage of Religious Diversity at Home and Atroad 264 Afterword 271 Notes 281 Selected Bibliography 319 Index 331 | Co-winner of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Book Award, 2003. — Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Book Award
|Doug Underwood is a professor of communication at the University of Washington. His books include Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss and The Undeclared War between Journalism and Fiction: Journalists as Genre Benders in Literary History.