Exactly 35 years ago, I was interviewed for my first daily newspaper job and was hired on my first try. It helped gobs that Ira Bill Cole, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (1957-84), where I was getting my masters degree, was a professional friend of the editor of the newspaper in Waterloo, Iowa. The interview itself seemed like a mere formality. I was hired, assigned to the courthouse beat and paid $110 a week. Tens of thousands of news articles, features, columns and blogs later, I have a bitter sweetness about newspapering and the media. Barring the unexpected, I soon begin my five-year countdown to retirement, so that I retire on June 17, 2012, on the precise 40th anniversary of the start of my work in dailies and 49 years writing for publication.Plenty of stinging things are said these days about the media and especially the major media. A relentless criticism is that countless important issues are going unreported and ignored as if there were a cabal to repress stories. Herd journalism tends to narrow the range of what goes reported and what is marginalized or ignored. Any of us who care deeply about compelling matters and who give our time and resources to causes and movements are continually astonished by the blindness of media to OUR issues. And then when reporters do take our issue on, their reports fail to be balanced or fair. A godsend, of course, has been the Internet, where communities are built around our favorite issues and everyone elses. Those who gravitate to each topic community see how it grows with each successive website, all linked together with others. Readers and members are diligent at finding news stories, columns, blogs and reports, then link readers to those materials, or extract the best parts. Its all to educate, proselytize and change beliefs.Mass medias future is anyones guess, and I am somewhat glad that I worked some good years when the newspaper that landed on the driveway was a dominant force. We in the secular media are particularly sensitive as to what role we will still play in bridging people of many faiths and no faiths, at a time when it seems cooperation among religious groups has stalled, and when polarization seems to be growing. This week, a progressive group, Media Matters for America, along with one called, Faith in Public Life, held a press conference in Washington, D.C. They complained about the major new media have paid way too much attention to conservative religious figures and voices. That, they said, is leading to a false implication that to be religious is to be conservative, and worse, that to be progressive is to lack faith or even be against faith. Media Matters research found that in major newspapers, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned or interviewed 2.7 times as often as progressive leaders; the major television networks, cable TV outlets and PBS quoted, mentioned or interviewed conservative religious leaders 3.8 times as often; and, when combining TV and newspapers coverage in a 25-month period, the conservative faith folks were quoted 2.8 times as much as progressive leaders.The general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA, the Rev. Bob Edgar, put it this way, I have long felt the media have given Americans a distorted view of what people of faith believe. This research from Media Matters proves that. I hope both the print and electronic media in this country will now seek the balance so many of them profess to have as they continue to report issues of religion and its impact on our society, government and the American culture.People of faith have long been and will continue to be active leaders on progressive causes for justice our faith compels it, said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.The media need to make sure not one side takes control of the conversation, said the Rev. Jim Forbes, noted senior pastor of The Riverside Church in New York City and host of the show The Time is Now on Air America.

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