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Preparing for battle
WJI sends students into the war zone of American journalism, but it needs your gifts to train its soldiers
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The "hard stuff" means getting ready to go out into the war zone of American journalism?especially into the daily newspapers of America where secularism, liberalism, and political correctness rule supreme. WJI is here to help the very best of those 100 students who show up each year equip themselves to perform on the terms demanded "out there," but to do so with some gutsy inner equipment of unusual design. It's a lean and mean approach?and it's working
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In three-week courses in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and other sites, Mr. Case's curriculum helps shape the thinking of his students so that, when they finish, they know both what their secular employers will expect and what it will take to carry a telling Christian influence into those positions. Paid internships and a graduate-level course with WORLD's Marvin Olasky wait for the top performers. And the possibility of someday writing for WORLD itself is high motivation for some of the students. Priya Abraham and John Dawson, both WJI products, write regularly for WORLD.
...we even got Olasky's attention. He likes to miss the point, as these people do. I have nothing against conservatives in the newsroom. I have nothing against conservative Christians in the newsroom. I have something against conservative Christians in the newsroom who are graduates of an institute whose mission is to train people to push a conservative Christian agenda in their capacity as straight journalists and do it in such a way that their editors don't notice.
But, in the end, I blame the editors. Some of the articles I've read by WJI people - particularly this Roy Rivenburg one (oy, link broken - here's a link to someone who posted a copy) - are incredibly slanted and no editor without an agenda should have let it be printed. Some of the WJI people are quite good, like the NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty, who is yet another person who has been disappeared off their "faculty"...oops, now it's "guest teacher" list. By "good," I mean quite subtle - the agenda doesn't jump out at you and smack you on the head, but once you know it's there it's fairly easy to spot.
It isn't the agenda - it's the hidden agenda.