Eloise Blondiau, MTS ’16, found her way to a career in journalism by way of her interests in both religion and lifelong learning. As a producer for the Peabody Award–winning show On the Media at New York Public Radio, Blondiau helps create stories—informed by religious literacy—to help listeners better understand the media. We sat down with Blondiau to learn more about how her HDS education informs her work.
HDS: How did you arrive at HDS, and what were some of the big lessons you learned at Divinity School that led you to journalism?
Blondiau: I arrived fresh from the University of Exeter, where I studied religion focused on disability studies, mental health, and hermeneutics. As an MTS candidate, I was set on pursuing a PhD and expected to double down on these interests to find my doctoral research topic. However, instead of narrowing my intellectual path, my HDS education broadened my interests, and I didn’t want to pick one subject. I studied Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, ritual theory, and queer theology. And through the journalism internships I completed during my academic journey, I realized that as a journalist you’re a student forever; you’re always learning new things. I also felt I could meaningfully contribute as a journalist because I had learned the value of translating and sharing academic research for a broader audience. The industry’s fast pace was also appealing; I lacked the patience to stay in academia.
HDS: Can you tell us about your role as producer for On the Media at New York Public Radio?
Blondiau: On the Media is a weekly radio show and a podcast about the media. We cover the press, the entertainment and publishing industries, but more broadly, On the Media is concerned with the stories we tell ourselves, where they come from, and how true they are. I love to produce segments that interrogate our historical record. For example, I produced a segment about how ancient myths about Christian persecution live on in American politics today. I’ve also reported on Toni Morrison’s role in the rise of historical fiction. My training in religion and comfort in spending time with academic material is really beneficial to my work. I have to read a lot of books, thoroughly and quickly. As a producer, I pitch and produce segments for the show, which requires a lot of research, interviewing guests, and writing what we call a prep (an interview guide for our show’s host). I also manage/train associate producers and assist our executive producer in managing our production schedule and editing.
“Belief, practice, and community have different emphases for different people who consider themselves religious. All journalists could benefit from understanding how to choose a source to highlight and accurately depict the complex topic of religion.”
HDS: How important is religious literacy in the field of journalism?
Blondiau: Religion is bound to come up in any reporter’s work, so journalists might as well be prepared to take it on. It’s impossible to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every faith tradition, and I do not think anyone expects any journalist to possess that. But it is possible—and useful—for journalists to understand a) the clichés and harmful stereotypes about religion so that they don’t perpetuate them, and b) the complexities they’re likely to encounter. Blanket statements that assert a particular faith is wholly bad or entirely good, for example, are too simplistic. Selecting representative sources for stories on religion is always a challenge, because religious leaders of a certain faith may not agree with lay practitioners, who may also be at odds with academic experts. Belief, practice, and community have different emphases for different people who consider themselves religious. All journalists could benefit from understanding how to choose a source to highlight and accurately depict the complex topic of religion.
HDS: How do you pick which stories to report on each week?
Blondiau: To share one example, I advocated for reporting about the rise of historical fiction. That may not seem like urgent breaking news, but what we consider “history” and what we consider “true” matters, and historical fiction encompasses those questions. During reporting, I learned that historical novels have come to dominate our literary awards in an unprecedented way, and asked what that tells us about what readers and writers are looking for. Our On The Media host, Brooke Gladstone, also interviewed Harvard professor, Tiya Miles, who is a novelist and historian exploring the historical record around slavery and its many gaps. How can we grapple with what we’ve lost? What do we do about what we don’t know? How do we try and understand those mysteries of the past that mean a lot to us? These are all questions that we brought to Dr. Miles. Her answer was that we need to use whatever evidence we can get our hands on, as well as our imaginations to inform our present moment.
In 2020, I also reported a story about a ubiquitous image: White Jesus. It felt urgent during a time that monuments were being toppled and during uprisings for racial justice. I spoke to a historian about where the most popular art of White Jesus came to prominence, to psychologists about the effect of the images on our minds, and to Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas about the theology of Black Jesus.
Reporting on any subject with integrity is a heavy responsibility in my show. One of the hardest things to do when distilling information is to preserve the nuances of a story. For example, a scholar may spend years of their life writing a book and defining their expertise. A segment that features their work is often a maximum of 15 minutes; to highlight their work and communicate their findings in a way that is not reductive is a big challenge. But it’s also one of the greatest rewards of the job when done well. When editing, you can’t include everything, so you have to be open to conversation, as well as adept at communicating nuances efficiently and effectively. That’s where my training in religious literacy has made a difference in how I approach journalism.
—by Melín A. Sotiriou Droz, MTS '23
A Week in the Life
MONDAY
Hold editorial meetings
TUESDAY
Interview prospective guests for the show
WEDNESDAY
Prepare scripts and interview plan for host
THURSDAY
Record and edit interviews
FRIDAY
Focus on packaging and promoting the week’s episode
SATURDAY
Dine out with friends
SUNDAY
Walk to the park and cook at home