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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged

News doesn’t happen on a 9-to-5 schedule.

Particularly during the 24/7 era of social media, journalists find themselves on the clock pretty much all the time.

That includes religion reporters such as Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana and The Tennessean’s Liam Adams.

Shellnutt and her 6-year-old son were in South Carolina visiting her parents Monday night when the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission issued a statement announcing the termination of its president, Brent Leatherwood.

Shellnutt was checking her computer for news tips and watching the Atlanta Braves game with her family when she learned of Leatherwood’s reported firing.

“If I were at home, I could look at my husband and just say, ‘I got breaking news,’ and shut the door of my office and just go,” said Shellnutt, CT’s editorial director of news.

“But I was sitting on the couch,” she explained. “I was like, ‘I think I’m going to have to work on this story.’ … It’s like 8:15, and my kid still needs to brush his teeth and do the wind-down routine and read the books and go to bed.”

Despite the unusual circumstances, Shellnutt quickly got to work and filed CT’s breaking news report by 10 p.m., describing Leatherwood’s sudden job loss as “a historic and unprecedented move by trustee leadership.”

Read the full column.

This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.

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