Zenger Prizes 2025: A Look At This Year’s Award Winners
(ANALYSIS) Thirty years ago, I made fun of The New York Times and The Atlantic by offering an imaginary dialogue in which an Atlantic reporter doubts the religious knowledge of his NYT counterpart: “I’ll bet you $20 you can’t say the Lord’s Prayer.”
The Timesman says “You’re on,” then bows his head and mumbles, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”
The Atlantician pulls out his wallet and hands over $20, saying, “That’s impressive. I didn’t think you knew it.”
That joke contained some truth, but the publications despite their biases do run some of the best newspaper and magazine articles in America. Today’s announcement of the five Zenger Prizes the two organizations won this year (along with five Zengers during the first three years of the awards) is evidence of that.
Zenger Prizes each year come from a Christian foundation, Zenger House, that honors feature stories based in on-the-ground reporting. I’m the chairman and one of the five judges, all veteran journalists. We like Christian journalism but give awards to journalists of any religion from around the world who write deeply reported stories consistent with a biblical ethic.
For example, Amitabh Parashar of the BBC is one of this year’s recipients for his Sept. 10 story, “The midwives who stopped murdering girls and started saving them.” Parashar reported on social workers in India who rescued and arranged adoptions for baby girls instead of killing them. The article shows how one of these saved girls, Monica, decades later met the midwife who helped to rescue her.
Miriam Jordan is receiving a Zenger for her New York Times story last March, “Driving With Mr. Gil.” It portrays Gil Howard, an 82-year-old retired professor in Modesto, California, who gave 400 Afghan women not just driving skills but a sense of independence. His free service is a lifeline that helps refugees and asylum seekers manage daily tasks, such as grocery shopping.
Another Zenger Prize winner is McKay Coppins for his July 2024 article in The Atlantic, “The Most Revealing Moment of a Trump Rally,” regarding prayers before Donald Trump’s speeches at campaign rallies. Pastors portrayed Trump as a new David, Solomon or Esther, promised he would be God's “agent of wrath” and looked forward to “retribution.”
Other Zenger Prizes have gone for stories in Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, Germany, Ukraine, Israel and Kenya. All of the winning articles can be accessed at the Zenger Prize landing page.
Zenger Prize winners known for their work in Christian publications include Emily Belz, Karis Bettis Carvalho, Angela Lu Fulton, Wendy Kiyomi, Sophia Lee, Eric McLaughlin, Andy Olsen, Harvest Prude and Sarah Zylstra.
Some podcast creators also receive Zengers. Justin Brierley’s “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God” won last year for rugged reporting about atheists and atheists-become-Christians that offers listeners complex theological truths in understandable ways. Brierley shows how hearts and minds are restless until they rest in God.
Good journalism comes from all over, in large and small publications. It has been 37 years since publication of a book of mine, “Prodigal Press.” The title was also mine: American journalism is the prodigal son of explicitly Christian newspapers of the 18th and early 19th centuries. But the subtitle was over the top: “The Anti-Christian Bias of the American News Media.”
I had been a Boston Globe correspondent and knew big newspapers and networks were not the Antichrist. Still, growing up in 1960s Boston with one moderately left newspaper and three local television stations that followed suit with their 6 p.m. news shows, I yearned for more ideological diversity, more rough-and-tumble debate, more opportunity for reporters to report not just “the news” but their own views.
Be careful what you wish for. A half-century later, barstool journalism dominates. Opinions get clicks and likes. Travel to report and investigate takes more time and costs more. But the emphasis on observation is consistent with the life of John Peter Zenger, the Christian after whom Zenger Prizes are named. The 1730s newspaper editor spent eight months in jail for specifying that the royal governor of New York, William Cosby, was a sheep-stealer and sheared local residents in other ways as well.
So American journalism is in trouble, but some great reporters still function.The Zenger House website includes a 13-minute video with all of this year’s winners but one: Marshall Allen, who died last year of a heart attack at age 52.
Journalist Warren Smith wrote about the reporter who investigated overcharges by health companies, “Marshall’s curiosity about the world was a directly reflection of his Christian faith and his Psalm 24 belief that ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.’ He discovered his love for writing while a missionary in Kenya. The newsletters he wrote to his family, friends and supporters back home ignited a journalistic impulse.”
Marvin Olasky is Christianity Today's executive editor for news and global and a Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture.