COGIC bishop built a church while breaking ground in Pittsburgh TV and radio.
As a TV news reporter and a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) pastor, Loran Mann tried to keep his two jobs separate. And that worked. Mostly.
But once in the 1980s, he was first to the scene of a standoff where an armed fugitive on the run after murdering his wife was cornered by police. The man decided he would surrender—but only to the locally famous newsman and man of God.
“I got an exclusive,” Mann said. “But the best part is he became a committed Christian.”
Mann, a groundbreaking Black broadcast reporter and a COGIC bishop who rose to the top level of leadership in the nation’s fifth largest Christian denomination, died in Pittsburgh on Sunday at the age of 74.
On Monday he was mourned throughout the city and celebrated by local religious leaders and broadcast professionals.
“He was a lion of the Gospel—outspoken and loving in his proclamation of Jesus Christ,” Episcopal Bishop Dorsey McConnell, who worked with Mann on racial justice issues, told Trib Live. “He was a pastor’s pastor and his leadership was felt across all lines of race and denomination.”
The Pittsburgh Black Media Federation said Mann was a trailblazer who inspired many people of color to go into media. He was first a disc jockey, then a TV news reporter, and then a radio station general manager, all while shepherding his growing Pentecostal congregation.
“He was one of the first Black journalists in radio and television in Pittsburgh,” said Dee Thompson, one of the founders of the Black Media Federation. “Loran was a pioneer in journalism, not only in Pittsburgh’s Black community, but also the community at large. And not only in Pittsburgh, but nationally.” ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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