Kimberly Winston Honored with 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award

By Emily McFarlan Miller

There was a time, not that long ago, when there were no journalists reporting on atheism full-time on the religion beat.

In fact, nonbelievers were among the “most despised” populations in the country, according to Kevin Eckstrom, chief strategic communications officer for Interfaith America.

If that seems hard to believe now — when countless headlines are written about the rise of the “nones” — you can thank Kimberly Winston’s reporting for humanizing the humanists.

“She made that community relatable, understandable,” said Eckstrom, who hired Winston in 2012 when he served as editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. He believes she was the first full-time reporter dedicated to covering atheism and freethought. 

Winston’s groundbreaking coverage of nonbelief and generous support for her colleagues covering religion are just a few of the reasons Winston was enthusiastically chosen by the Religion News Association board of directors to receive the 2026 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award.

Created in 2001 and named after the late William A. Reed, the first Black president of RNA, the award is presented to individuals who demonstrate exceptional long-term commitment and service to RNA and its members, as well as to the field of religion reporting.

The award will be presented during RNA’s 77th Annual Conference from April 23 to 25 in Atlanta, Georgia. RNA president Dawn Araujo-Hawkins said she’s heard from people who made plans to attend — and volunteer at — this year’s conference specifically because Winston was receiving this award.

“I think that's very telling of the kind of reputation and character that she has,” Araujo-Hawkins said.

She describes Winston as a genuinely caring person with “infectious charisma,” who not only is beloved by her colleagues, but also an inspiration with her vision of what journalism can and should be.

But Winston didn’t originally set out to be a journalist.

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater in 1986, she moved to New York and fulfilled her dream to become an actress, touring the country in a children’s theater company and working for two seasons in a national Shakespeare company.

Back in New York, she began reading The New York Times every day and was riveted by the late John F. Burns’ reporting on the Bosnian War.

“His writing was so good, and I had no idea up until that point that journalism involved good writing,” she said.

Winston enrolled first in a feature writing class at New York University, then the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She studied with Ari Goldman, who was fresh off covering religion for The New York Times; she learned how to write a lede and cover breaking news from examples of his work on the Godbeat.

“What I took away from my time with Ari was that religion was fun to write about. It was important to write about. It was — I remember him saying this in class — the best of beats because it can cover everything, and you get to do all these cool things and see all these cool things and talk to people about mystery,” she said.

Winston began reporting on religion in the mid-1990s as the beat took off at newspapers across the country, first for a suburban daily paper in the San Francisco Bay Area, then for the Dallas Morning News and more as a freelancer.

She covered atheism for six years at RNS — her “dream job,” she said — which carried her byline to The Washington Post, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, NPR.org, The Salt Lake City Tribune and the Houston Chronicle. Beyond nonbelief, Winston traveled to Las Vegas to tell the story of spontaneous memorials after tragedy and along the Mormon Trail to write about contested sacred space in the United States. 

“When RNF needed someone to cover the secular-humanist community full time, only one person came to mind: Kimberly Winston,” said Debra Mason, former long-time RNA executive director and founding director of Religion News Foundation. 

To this day, Mason said, Winston is the only journalist she knows who has had nonbelief as a full-time beat in secular news. 

Mason had gotten to know Winston when Winston freelanced for ReligionLink, RNF’s resource equipping journalists to cover religion successfully and effectively. 

Later, she asked Winston to mentor University of Missouri students covering Pope Francis’ trip to Philadelphia and a religious freedom meeting in Brazil, which, she said, “made a lasting impression on the next generation of journalists.” Winston also has mentored emerging journalists in the RNA Mentorship Program.

“Kimberly has the writing spirit of a true artist and the personality of a saint,” Mason said.

Eckstrom praised the creativity and “sense of wild curiosity” that Winston brings to her reporting. In addition to her background in theater, she has authored books on prayer beads and quilt ministries and is “the queen of Etsy,” he said, referencing Winston’s beautifully crafted, bespoke buttons, cards, journals and more.

“I think she sees beauty in the world where other people don't,” Eckstrom said.

“I always get the sense from her that her telling people's stories is part of her way of putting good into the world — you know, adding a little bit of beauty, striking a match in an otherwise pretty dark place,” he added.

Since her return to freelancing in 2018, Winston has reported in print, online, radio and podcasts, discovering a new love for audio after taking Columbia’s first Audio Essentials Bootcamp.

One of her favorite articles, she said, was about cicadas. Her interest piqued by the emergence of Brood X in 2021, she Googled “God and cicadas” — a trick she’s used before to find unique religion angles — and stumbled on a bug philosopher.

Winston’s reporting continues to take her around the world, traveling as far as Hawaii, Malaysia and Pakistan with the East-West Center’s Senior Journalists Seminar and to Israel and the Palestinian territories with Project Interchange, organized by the American Jewish Committee. She’s traveled twice each to Kosovo and Belgium for fellowships and interfaith conferences. 

Additional fellowships allowed her to profile a Buddhist who trained rats to sniff out landmines with the University of Southern California Center for Religion and Civic Culture’s Spiritual Exemplars project and eco-chaplains helping people deal with climate grief with a grant from the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University.

In 2021, a reporting grant from the Global Exchange on Religion in Society took Winston to Bosnia, where Burns’ reporting had inspired her love for journalism.

It was a full-circle moment. It was also depressing, she said. 

“It just hit me really hard. These conflicts are deeply embedded and more complex than you can spit out in 1,000 words. And I just felt very useless,” she said.

Despite the realities of the beat, Winston said, she believes journalism is fun. Religion, too.

Veteran (broadcast) religion journalist and frequent travel companion Kim Lawton said that comes across not only in what Winston writes, but who she is.

“I think most people, even those who don't know Kimberly, can identify her because of that big, booming laugh that she has. Just her way of seeing the funny things and the happy things in the world is something that really draws people to her,” Lawton said.