Ask the Editor: What about Juneteenth?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, July 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, Ask the Editor. Today, WORLD Radio’s Executive Producer answers a couple of recent emails and has an update from the Editorial Council. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: The first email I’d like to address comes from Joshua Cools. He wrote to us this week with some feedback on a missed opportunity. Here’s a portion of Joshua’s message:

I am a long-time daily listener and first time donor... I am writing to note that I was disappointed that [you]… gave such little attention to Juneteenth during the June 19th podcast, particularly when part of the show was the World History Book. It seems like that would have been a great opportunity to provide a little more context…the end of slavery in this country is something worth celebrating and deserved a little more air time. Thanks for your faithful work.

Well Joshua, thank you for your thoughtful critique. You did so with grace, and I appreciate it. I understand your disappointment in the lack of significant coverage of Juneteenth last month. While we acknowledged it in our newscast, you’re right, we could have made a bigger deal of the day—especially as this was the first year Juneteenth was a federal holiday. And you’re also right that our Monday History Book segment would have been a great place to highlight it. Sorry I missed that opportunity. I will look for ways to better mark the day next year. Thanks for being a faithful listener.

Next, some feedback on our features. Last week we heard from Ashlyn Hall. She’s been a regular listener to the program for more than five years. She and her husband are financial supporters of WORLD and have submitted multiple pre-rolls. She wrote in with a critique of some of our recent human interest stories:

Dear Editor,

…I love your program and use it to get most of my News information…[but] I find that many of the features after the headline news are becoming increasingly…irrelevant…Until recently, I’ve never ‘fast forwarded’ through your stories but I am doing it on a daily basis now. I don’t know what’s changed, if anything, but felt compelled to let you know.

Kind regards…

Ashlyn and I have corresponded a few times since that email, and thought I’d share a few highlights of our communication in case you have the same concerns:

From the beginning of our podcast, we've been committed to a magazine format. That means we cover the latest news—or what our editors identify as: “obligatory stories.” But we also cover stories that don’t have as strong a news hook, but provide opportunities to report on what we call “discretionary stories.”

Like the Apostle Paul at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, we seek to declare how God is at work in the world that He’s made. That's why we cover what's going on in the SBC while at the same time introduce listeners to how God is at work through a veteran who uses horses to foster healing in the lives of other veterans.

We often describe our mission as: “Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.” Our goal with these human interest stories is to inspire you. We hope that you will be encouraged by the things people are doing for God's glory and the good of His world. We also hope that you will be motivated to go serve God in some capacity yourself—using your gifts, experiences, and interests to build up the church or touch the world in a small way with the hope of the gospel.

Now we may not always hit the mark, but these stories play an important role in our program. As the news of the day is often difficult and discouraging, these types of stories lift our eyes up from the trouble and give us a chance to consider some of the good news around us. Perhaps we can do a better job framing the stories so you know why we think they are relevant, and we'll take a look at how to do that better.”

After I sent that email to Ashlyn, she replied almost immediately with this encouraging response:

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your thoughtful [email]. I will definitely keep an open mind and try to seek God’s purpose for me in the reports that I don’t find as interesting.

Your sister in Christ.

I love that. One of the things that makes our relationship with you so different from other podcasts is that we are brothers and sisters. We are redeemed by the same Christ, united by the same Holy Spirit, and set apart for good deeds by the same God. So Ashlyn, thank you for letting us know how we’re doing and at the same time being so gracious in the process.

Finally this morning, a quick update: a couple months ago I mentioned during this segment that the Editorial Council was working on updating our style guide in relation to the use of the term “progressive” in our reporting. Well last month we approved a new guideline for our reporters and editors. Here’s what we’ve decided:

We will minimize the use of this term progressive when describing groups or ideologies unless it is part of a proper name. We may use other terms like “left” or “leftist” instead but it is better to describe the specific beliefs behind such a label than to use the label as an identifier.

Or to put it another way, we discourage the use of the term, but we don’t outright prohibit it.

And that’s this month’s Ask the Editor, I’m Paul Butler.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.