{"id":9956,"date":"2023-09-26T07:33:56","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T12:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/?p=9956"},"modified":"2023-09-22T18:00:37","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T23:00:37","slug":"october-1-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/october-1-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"October 1, 2023–Who Has Authority?"},"content":{"rendered":"

JesusShannyn Fuerst, Seattle, WA<\/b><\/p>\n

Warm-up Questions<\/b><\/h4>\n

Who is in charge of your life? Who is in charge at work? At home? At school?\u00a0 <\/span>At daycare?\u00a0 <\/span>At church? What gives them authority or power?<\/p>\n

Who Has Authority?<\/b><\/h4>\n

I was listening to a story on NPR\u2019s This American Life <\/i>about Malcolm Gladwell, who writes for the New Yorker and has written a number of well-known books. He talked about his first job, writing for the Washington Post newspaper. Malcolm sat at the business desk and for six weeks he did pretty much nothing. Someone finally took pity on him and told him to write a story on the business earnings of a local bioscience company.\u00a0 <\/span>However, \u00a0he mistakenly wrote that the company lost <\/i>$5 million in the previous quarter, when in fact they had made<\/i> $5 million in the previous quarter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the morning the story ran, the stock dropped 10 points. Of course, Malcolm got into all sorts of trouble for his mistake. \u00a0But as he was thinking through his story and where he went wrong, he had an epiphany. He realized that he had made up the story–even though unintentionally–AND he moved the stock market. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Malcolm eventually moved from the business desk to the health and science desk. One of the first stories he did there was a story about an AIDS conference. Three cities were being considered to host the next conference: Rome, Vancouver, and Amsterdam. It was a big deal for a reporter, because you got to go to one of these cities, and it was a week’s paid vacation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Malcolm had already been to all three of those cities and he wanted to go somewhere new. So, as he was writing up the story, he wrote that NIH officials were considering Rome, Vancouver, Amsterdam, and<\/i> Sydney, Australia (though Sydney was not originally under consideration). Sure enough, his addition was picked up and the conference was held in Sydney. \u00a0In all this, Malcolm says he had a sense of real power for the first time.<\/p>\n

Right around that time, a new reporter, Billy Booth, joined the newspaper. Malcolm and Billy had a contest to see who could get certain articles printed in the paper. They would find obscure topics on different diseases, bolden them up, and watch as the articles moved from page 15 to page 2 in the paper. Drunk on power, they came up with a contest–to see who could get the phrase, \u201craises new and troubling questions” in American journalism. The person who got it printed the most in one month won.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Discussion Questions<\/b><\/h4>\n