David Briggs Honored with 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award

“There have been plenty of highlights,” said David Briggs, veteran religion reporter best known for his years with The Associated Press in the 1990s.  

Briggs covered three popes, seven presidents and almost too many church conventions to count. But far and away, he said, the most impactful interviews he ever conducted were with survivors and victims of abuse by religious organizations and clergy. “Those interviews became some of the defining moments of my life,” Briggs said. “Over and over again, they invited me into their homes, into their lives, to share their stories.” 

In Ohio, where Briggs covered religion for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, he wrote story after story about Mainline Protestant leaders and evangelicals, Jewish organizations and clergy of all kinds who broke the sacred trust given to them by abusing the vulnerable. Along the way, he angered plenty of people across the religious spectrum, he said. But it didn’t matter much to Briggs. He was there for those who shared their stories.  

“I kept up with a great number of those people — over 90 of these individuals — over the years,” he said, “and those are still the stories that stick with me.”  

For his contributions to the beat, long-term commitment to RNA and service to its members, Briggs will be honored with the 2025 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award at a banquet on April 5 at the Religion News Association’s Annual Conference, in Arlington, Virginia. 

"David Briggs has done so much to advance and improve the field of religion reporting,” said RNA President, Dawn Araujo-Hawkins. “His career has been exemplary of everything RNA stands for,” she said, “and his enthusiasm for the beat is tangible — you can't help but to feel excited about religion journalism when you talk to him."

The annual prize was created in 2001 and its namesake, William A. Reed was the first Black president of RNA, serving from 1976-78. He was also the first Black journalist to work full time for The Tennessean in Nashville, and one of the first Black reporters on the religion beat. Reed died in 1991. 

Briggs' experience includes nearly a decade as national writer and editor for AP, where he worked with AP bureaus throughout the world, coordinating events such as papal trips and guiding writers and editors on religion reporting in their areas.  

After his time at AP, he wrote for The Cleveland Plain Dealer until 2008, with his writing also appearing in Religion News Service. In 2009, he was named news editor for United Methodist News Service (UMNS), the official news agency of The United Methodist Church. Briggs closed his career writing the Ahead of the Trend column on religion research  and editing the Global Plus feature showcasing the work of journalists and scholars throughout the world for the Association of Religion Data Archives.  

Briggs was president of RNA from 2001 to 2003 and has been named many times by RNA among the Top 10 religion writers and Top 10 religion reporters in North America. He was also the recipient of RNA's Supple Religion Writer of the year award, as well as the Religion Communicators Council's Wilbur Award for excellence in secular religion journalism. His work was also nominated seven times for the Pulitzer Prize — three times by AP and twice each by major metropolitan newspapers the Buffalo News and The Cleveland Plain Dealer.  

After studying journalism at the University of Missouri, Briggs started his career at the New Haven Register, a paper with a circulation of 130,000 at the time. Briggs said he was interested in religion, but did not begin on the beat. He bounced around the bullpen doing a variety of jobs before going to graduate school at Yale Divinity School, where he earned his M.A.R. in Religion in 1985. 

“My time at Yale prepared me for being a religion reporter,” he said. “It gave me knowledge I continually came back to throughout my career.” 

In particular, Briggs said if interviewees made claims about certain Bible passages, he would be able to surprise them with his own knowledge and turn the conversation into a dialogue, rather than an oppositional interview. 

Even if reporters don’t go to grad school, Briggs said it is always important for reporters to be prepared.  

Briggs said he is a huge advocate for scholarly knowledge of religion, which can help reporters hold sources accountable. “Our job is to examine and determine the truth, the validity of what someone is telling us,” Briggs said. “I wish more religion reporters cultivated those skills and had the ability to know the difference between who is wrong and who is doing valid, truthful, revealing work. 

“My biggest lesson over the years is don’t believe everything you hear,” he said. “Do your own work and your own research. Come up independently with your answers. Challenge yourself and the people you talk to.”  

Briggs pointed to previous Lifetime Achievement award winners John Dart of The Los Angeles Times (2008) and Richard “Dick” Ostling of AP (2006) as paragons of this kind of religiously literate reporting. 

Briggs also mentioned the collegial, educational atmosphere of annual RNA conferences and how much he enjoyed them. “I went each year and made sure the paper sent me,” he said. “I never missed the opportunity to learn and grow and give back.”  

And across the years, Briggs’ own knowledge expanded as he encountered new communities and got to know well-established ones from fresh perspectives.  

In particular, Briggs remembers charismatic televangelist Oral Roberts, who advanced a strong belief in God’s provision tied to his form of prayer or donations to his cause, making him an early propagator of what is now known as the “prosperity Gospel.” 

Over the years, Briggs got to know Roberts’ theology and preaching. And when Roberts’ daughter, Rebecca Nash, died with her husband, businessman Marshall Nash, in an airplane crash on February 11, 1977, and Roberts’ elder son, Ronald Roberts, died by suicide on June 10, 1982, Briggs recalls how Roberts came at the tragedies in a compassionate way.  

“Roberts could have come at it with a hard line,” Briggs said. “But he remained hopeful, despite his theology. 

“Things like that really humanize people and movements we may have already had a predetermined image of,” he said. “It kept happening throughout my career, surprising me every day, learning every day, and trying to become more sensitive to the variety of people we religion reporters connect with.”  

In his later years, Briggs identified the need to recognize, and encourage, the value of religion reporting worldwide. To that end, he helped found the International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) in 2012 in Bellagio, Italy with the aim of empowering journalists across the globe to better report on religion.  

The IARJ has partnered with academic institutions and journalism organizations to gather hundreds of members around the world and hosts a website in English and Arabic to link members with information and data about religion-reporting from nation to nation.  

Peggy Fletcher Stack, previous winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2023) and Executive Director of IARJ, said even after he left daily journalism, Briggs worked tirelessly “to make his dream of bringing together reporters who cover faith all over the world come to fruition.” 

She said, “I saw up-close his idealism and lifting up of others, his deep concern for reporters on smaller papers and his kindness toward minority voices. He diplomatically navigated differing opinions, lifted up every voice, and outlined his hopes for a global network dedicated to the coverage of faith.” 

Saying that it was Briggs’ idea to launch RNA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the first place, Fletcher Stack said, “he is an exemplar of the best of us on the beat and a world class peacemaker as well.” 

Looking ahead to the awards banquet in Arlington, Briggs said he is thankful to have been on the beat and contributed to it along the way. “I just want to say a big thank you to RNA,” he said. “This award was intended to honor other people, as far as I am concerned. But I am amazed that others think I am worthy of such a distinction.”