T

he folks over at Get Religion scored a bit of a coup in this little world of religion reporting when they snagged Ari Goldman from Columbia J School’s as their newest blogger. From Get Religion guru Terry Mattingly:

“During his two decades at the New York Times, he was one of the nation’s most trusted bylines on the religion beat and I have heard that judgment voiced by a stunningly broad range of clergy and Godbeat critics. In other words, any decent survey of religion writing in the late 20th century would have to include Ari’s work.”

In the interests of full disclosure: both Dan Burke and I are Columbia alums, and Dan traversed across Russia in Ari’s class. I took Ari’s class while he was on sabbatical, which had a great deal with how I ended up at RNS, but that’s a long story.