Zenger Prizes: Honoring Good Reporting on Helping the Homeless

Three years ago, I began writing my Human Lives column about homelessness on the Discovery Institute website. I’ll be concluding that series at the end of next month, but I’d like Discovery Institute supporters to know about some prizes announced today that will hearten those concerned about journalism, homelessness, or both.

Over the years, The New York Times editorially has supported neither Intelligent Design nor the intelligent design of programs to help homeless individuals. Nor is the Times accustomed to getting awards from Christian organizations — but Christian groups that fight homelessness are equally unaccustomed to getting positive stories in the Times.

That’s why a story by reporter Jason DeParle four days before Thanksgiving last year was particularly memorable. DeParle began, “Six mornings a week, a call for quiet stills a day center for homeless people in Northern Virginia, and those so inclined gather to thank God, read scripture and ponder its message for their tribulations.”

DeParle noted that the center offers free breakfast and lunch, showers and laundry, dental care and a jobs program — but it “treats Bible study as equally vital, if not more so.” He reported the results of one large study correlated participation in religious services with better mental health and less substance abuse.

Many Times reporters haven’t “followed the science” concerning either homelessness or evolution. Maybe that’s changing. A little nonprofit foundation I started a few years back and chair, Zenger House, is trying to encourage that movement by honoring narrative stories based in reality rather than ideology.

Today, Zenger House is announcing this year’s awards to 15 journalists who chose to write deeply reported stories at street-level rather than suite-level. DeParle is one of the honorees: You can read his story and the work of other winners — 40 Zenger Prizes in the four years Zenger Prizes have been around — at www.zengerhouse.com. The website also includes a 13-minute video that gives highlights of interviews with the winners.

DeParle wrote that “the center’s Bible study is wholly voluntary and prized by those who join. Whatever benefits it lends the dispossessed, it also offers a reminder that people lumped together as ‘the homeless’ are not an undifferentiated mass but individuals with inner lives and needs that go beyond survival to the search for meaning.”