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Boston Globe Hires John Allen

Like Post’s hiring of @costareports, Globe hire of @JohnLAllenJr an example of internet era making MSM better at covering alien terrain. — Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 7, 2014   Big media news from Boston: John Allen, a senior correspondent for the highly respected National Catholic Reporter, will be joining the staff of The Boston Globe […]

 

Big media news from Boston:

John Allen, a senior correspondent for the highly respected National Catholic Reporter, will be joining the staff of The Boston Globe in early February.

Allen, widely hailed as the best-sourced and most knowledgeable English-speaking reporter on the Vatican, will help lead coverage of Catholicism and the Vatican as an associate editor of The Globe.

“There is a resurgence of global interest in the Catholic Church, inspired by the words and deeds of the newly-installed leader, Pope Francis,” said editor Brian McGrory. “There’s nobody in the nation better suited. John is basically the reporter that bishops and cardinals call to find out what’s going on within the confines of the Vatican. His inexhaustible energy, supported by extraordinary insights, is legendary.”

Allen instantly becomes the most important journalist in America with regard to covering the Catholic Church worldwide. Actually, he already was, for people who knew his work; going to the Globe simply means he has a much bigger platform. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving journalist, either. I’ve never met John Allen, but I have been following his reporting for many years. Though he wrote for a famously liberal Catholic newspaper, every conservative Catholic I know respects him, because you always get the idea with Allen that fairness and thoroughness are his basic standards. Plus, the man deeply understands Catholicism and the Catholic world.

I think Ross Douthat’s point in the tweet above is true. I’m not as familiar with Robert Costa’s work as I am with John Allen’s, because I care far more about religion than politics, but from what I know about Costa’s reputation, he’s a deeply sourced reporter on the Right who understands how conservatives think, and who is not seen as particularly partisan. I mean, he doesn’t let whatever partisan commitments he has get in the way of fair reporting, but his partisanship (that is, his identification as a conservative) gives him understanding and access that other reporters simply couldn’t hope to get. It must be a difficult balance to strike for both men, using their inside knowledge of the worlds they cover to bring depth and understanding to their journalism, without allowing themselves to take up one or the other faction’s crusading.

Can you think of journalists in other important coverage areas who have made their reputation primarily with an online audience, and who ought to be hired by a major media outlet because of the particular expertise they bring to a beat? I’m not talking about opinion journalists, but beat reporters.

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