As The Salt Lake Tribune’s senior religion reporter, Peggy Fletcher Stack has interviewed Catholic cardinals and Protestant pastors, Buddhist teachers and Muslim imams, Jewish rabbis and Latter-day Saint prophets.
Her faith coverage has taken her all over the world — from Asia to Africa, South America to Europe, and U.S. locales stretching from Boston to the Bay Area.
Now Stack has accepted a new responsibility in addition to her full-time role at The Tribune. She is the new executive director of the International Association of Religion Journalists.
The global group, which she helped found in 2012, also named Uday Basu, a veteran religion writer and editor at India’s Statesman newspaper, as its board chair.
“I can already feel new energy coming from the election of Uday and Peggy to these two key positions,” Canadian journalist Douglas Todd, who has been chair for the past six years, said in a news release. “We couldn’t have found better leadership from around the globe.”
IARJ is a worldwide collection of journalists with the goal of “promoting excellence in the coverage of religion and spirituality.”
“It provides services and resources to strengthen and support the work of its members,” according to its mission statement. “It engages media leaders, educational institutions and communities on the importance of accurate, balanced and ethical religion coverage to foster understanding.”
Stack, who has won numerous religion writing awards, has high ambitions for the association.
“I believe IARJ can emerge from the pandemic slowdown as strong or even stronger than ever,” she said. “...I am committed to doing my part to help IARJ fulfill its mission as a preeminent global network of journalists.”
And Stack remains committed to writing faith stories for The Tribune.
