English newspaper The Times will no longer have a specialist religion correspondent, after the departure of Ruth Gledhill who held the post for 25 years.
Writing in The Tablet, former religious affairs correspondent for The Times Clifford Longley lamented the move.
“In the case of newspapers, they will continue to report on religion, though less of it,” Longley wrote.
“In a subject of considerable complexity, rife with public misunderstanding, expertise is no longer, by and large, thought necessary,” he continued.
“That is itself an insidious kind of secular judgement – that making a mess of the coverage of religion is now a risk the media is prepared to run because the subject doesn’t matter anymore.”