Lisa Miller is a senior editor at Newsweek. She oversees all of the magazine’s religion coverage and writes the weekly “Belief Watch column. She also helped launch the Washington Post’s “OnFaith,” an online global conversation about religion and faith moderated by Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham and Washington Post writer Sally Quinn.
She edited Newsweek’s “Spirituality in America” double issue, which looked at the rise of spirituality and why many Americans are choosing to seek spiritual experiences outside traditional religions. Miller wrote “The Politics of Jesus” cover story (10/13/2006), which examined the impact of religion in the midterm elections. Miller oversaw “The Giving Back Awards,” double issue in July 2006, where Newsweek recognized people who were making a difference in the world.
During her tenure as Society Editor at Newsweek, Miller led coverage of numerous health and issues-related cover stories including: “Sex, Shame and the Catholic Church,” (March 4, 2002), “The Bible and the Qur’an,” (Feb. 11, 2002), “Fighting Addiction,” (Feb. 12, 2001), and “God and the Brain,” (May 7, 2001).
Award-winning stories and cover packages that Miller edited include: The National Headliner Award for feature writing for David France for a series of articles. They included: “The Angry Profit is Dying,” (June 11, 2001) about AIDS activist Larry Kramer on the 20th anniversary of the killer virus; “Scouts Divided,” (August, 6, 2001) on internal strife within the Boy Scouts of America over allowing homosexuals to join; and “Blood and Money,” with David Noonan (December 17, 2001) an investigation into whether the donations made after September 11 really went where they were intended.
Miller came to Newsweek from The Wall Street Journal, where she was an award-winning senior special writer covering religion for the paper’s front page since 1997. She was also an editor for the Marketplace page (1993-94), where she helped launch the weekly “Health Journal,” and a travel reporter (1994-97).
She started her journalism career as an editorial assistant (1984) at the Harvard Business Review and later became manuscript editor there (1985-87) before moving to The New Yorker (1987-92) and then Self magazine (1992-93), where she was senior editor for arts coverage and created their “In Focus” section in the front of the book.
Miller received a New York Newswomen’s Club award in 1998 for feature writing. She graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in English in 1984.