So the ad sections dwindled, as did the coverage. But today religion gets covered more than before. One good answer is that religion has gone public more than before. In olden days, reading articles about a bake sale or a mortgage burning at the church next door had to be an acquired and then quickly lost taste. But today, religion is at the crossroads of so many spiritual paths that hard-boiled editors who used to disdain religion now are learning that they will miss some of the best stories and many of their best readers if they continue to ignore faith.
People kill each other in the name of their religions and make prime time for doing so.
People heal others in the scope of religious faith and sometimes make page one for doing so. Add to this the answer that there is more stimulus. We keep on adding reasons for more coverage. There have been clerical scandals, and the press loves to expose these, again on page one. That means featuring close-ups, often of ordinary people being heroic or saintly in the public world.