Heidi Schlumpf and Sandi Villarreal have a lot in common. They’re both experienced journalists, feminists, mothers and women of faith. And this summer, both assumed the top jobs at their respective media outlets: National Catholic Reporter and Sojourners magazine.
Both women are making history. Schlumpf is only the second woman to assume the position of NCR’s executive editor; Villarreal is the first woman named as Sojourner’s editor in chief. Both said the new challenges were even more difficult during a pandemic. But both have confidence in their ability to lead and to grow their respective media outlets. Both have loyal print followers but are trying to woo younger readers to their online sites. NCR’s site gets 1 million visitors and 2 million to 2.5 million page views a month, Schlumpf says. Villarreal says that Sojourners reaches an estimated 6 million readers.
NCR has an annual budget of about $5 million and employs about 34 people, says NCR publisher Tom Fox, who retired from the position in October. Sojourners and its advocacy arm together reported total revenues of $7.1 million in 2017, the last year it posted a financial statement on its website.
For its 56 years of existence, Schlumpf says, “NCR has this history of allowing progressive voices in its paper.” She adds that while journalism drives the paper’s coverage, the positions it takes in its columns and editorials are often more progressive than the views of the institutional church.
Schlumpf’s ascension from investigative reporter to executive editor in part reflected Fox’s long-held desire to promote a woman to the top job. Fox invited Schlumpf, 56, to apply for the position. Schlumpf had a long history writing and reporting for NCR, and was a journalist Fox had long admired. “I was aware of what she was doing as a national correspondent. And so it wasn’t a great mystery that she would certainly be a top contender if she applied,” he says.
For years, Fox had been troubled by the suppression of women in the institutional church; as the publisher of NCR, he was in a position to do something about it. Women just bring more to the table, he says, contending that “men are too tired and too predictable and too spoiled to do the kind of work that needs to be done if we’re going to save our planet.”
Based in Chicago, Schlumpf wrote columns for NCR for about a decade, resisting requests from Fox that she join the team based in Kansas City, Missouri. “Nothing against Kansas City,” Schlumpf hurries to add. “I’m sure it’s a great place to live and raise a family. But I’m a pretty big-city person. And I’m pretty happy in Chicago.”
It was only three years ago that Schlumpf formally joined NCR as national correspondent, a position she accepted because it meant she didn’t have to move to NCR headquarters. As national correspondent, she did groundbreaking work on the influence of conservative Catholic donors, sex abuse, politics and the role of women in the church. “If you’re a more progressive Catholic, and a journalist, NCR is kind of the pinnacle of your career to be able to work full time for them,” Schlumpf says. “And as national correspondent, I just had so much freedom to do the kinds of stories I just had never been able to do in my life before. It was really exciting.”
Schlumpf accepted the position of NCR executive editor with the same arrangement—meaning that she could remain in Chicago. A few years ago, she says, NCR decided that technology did not require all staffers to work from offices at their headquarters. But while she was used to working from home, Schlumpf says, learning the ropes at NCR virtually wasn’t easy. “Becoming editor in the middle of a pandemic, I don’t recommend it,” she says, noting that making the transition from national correspondent to “top editor” at a publication was a big jump. “There was a lot I had to learn. And my colleagues had to be very patient with me.” Virtual school also meant that her children—sixth and seventh graders—would sometimes “wander into Zoom calls” as home life impinged on work life.
Whatever qualms Schlumpf might have had about her ascension weren’t evident when she took the reins last May. Schlumpf’s first column as executive editor castigated powerful New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan for his excessive devotion to President Donald Trump. She asked her readers to identify which fawning quote praising Trump came from his former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and which came from Dolan. But the column that drew hate mail was the one she wrote holding up Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist who supports abortion rights, as the “future of the Catholic church,” praising the masterful way she responded to the Republican congressman who had called her a “f---ing bitch.” Schlumpf published some of the reader critiques the following week.
Those critiques prompted another column. “I’ve been called many things—many of them unprintable” because of the AOC column, Schlumpf wrote, adding that the most common epithets that rained down on her, mostly from men, were “Communist” and “baby killer.” In contrast, two women who also disagreed with her articulated their views—one published in NCR and the other on a conservative Catholic news site—in a civil and reasoned manner, she wrote. The fact that they could disagree “without being disagreeable” made her optimistic. “Maybe there is hope for our church, our country, our world, after all,” she wrote. “If there is, I’m pretty sure it will come from women sharing a martini.”
After climbing the editing ladder over nearly a decade at Sojourners, Villarreal became executive editor in March 2020. However, her elevation from executive editor to editor in chief in August was prompted by a newsroom crisis.
Villarreal has spent most of her professional life at Sojourners. She brings a diverse religious and ethnic background as both White and Hispanic, growing up in Texas with a Catholic father and Southern Baptist mother attending Catholic schools, but also worshipping at Baptist services. She became a Southern Baptist as a teen. Growing up in Texas, she says, she had Baptist friends who didn’t believe Catholics were Christians. “On the other side, there are certain strains of Catholicism that don’t view Baptists as being Christians.” So, she says, addressing the Baptist and Catholic sides of her family and background was “a little bit of a struggle. I now very much appreciate having experience in both, because it helps me to understand the broader landscape.” As a journalism major at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, Villarreal met her husband, who is a Lutheran pastor, and thus became a Lutheran. She has three children—two girls and a boy—under the age of eight.
She first discovered Sojourners, she says, when she read “God’s Politics” by Sojourners founder Rev. Jim Wallis. It opened her eyes to a “different way to view public life and Christians acting in the public square.” That realization had a profound impact. “It felt like I found my people,” she says.
Taking an editing job at the publication required the family to move from Minneapolis, where her husband was a pastor, to Washington, D.C. The move was an “investment” she says, and it’s been successful. Sojourners “has been an incredible place to be in community with people,” she says. “As I started a family and grew my family, they’ve been just so incredibly supportive of this so-called work-life balance. “
NCR actually covered the crisis that landed Villarreal the top job at Sojourners. Last July, Sojourners published a controversial online story accusing U.S. Catholic bishops of failing to condemn white supremacy among Catholics, permitting a “white power faction” to persist in the church. Several Catholic organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, were outraged by the story. Wallis withdrew the story primarily because he did not want to upset Catholic partners in his coalition to fight poverty.
Taking the story off the site prompted two Sojourners editors to resign, and another wave of criticism. The story was ultimately reposted. But Wallis resigned as editor in chief. “The decision to pull the article revealed the fact that it’s really difficult to be the president of Sojourners and the editor in chief,” Villarreal says. “Sojourners is a unique organization, in that it has this really wonderful publication and it also has a side that works with other partners and organizations and does advocacy work.”
Villarreal says she was the logical choice to assume the top job. “Jim had already put his trust in me to be the executive editor,” she says, so it made sense “to have me step into” the editor in chief position. In her job as executive editor, Villarreal’s responsibility was to “oversee the magazine and the online publication and to unite the online and print presence,” and move forward, she says. Her job as editor in chief did not constitute a “huge shift in my day-to-day work,” Villarreal says. But she recognizes the importance of the leadership change. “It is certainly a big deal for Jim, who has been editor in chief … since 1971 to hand this over.” She adds that for her, “it’s a really big role and big shoes to fill. I don’t take it lightly.”
And it prompted soul-searching about the publication’s editorial independence. Sojourners released new editorial policies and procedures” that “document the fact of our editorial independence,” she says. The policies make clear that Sojourner’s publications will not be influenced by donors, advertisers or advocacy partners. “We are exploring what that looks like moving forward and how that plays out in the publications,” she says.
But she also stressed that the publication has not given up its social justice roots or calling. Both the publication and advocacy group have essentially the same mission, Villarreal says. “Our mission is to inspire hope and action by articulating the biblical call to racial and social justice, life and peace, and environmental stewardship,” she says. “The magazine does this in a different way than the advocacy side,” she adds. “But it’s a shared goal.”
Villarreal’s commentary on the strengthened standards made the same point, but more emphatically. For too long, she wrote, the notion of objectivity in news gathering had meant reliance on norms “driven by very homogenous – generally white and male – gatekeepers.” These standards “taught us that police reports were to be considered factual accounts,” that “bothsidesism” was actually “fair and balanced reporting” and that journalists “should resist [a] relationship with the communities they report on.
“Editorial independence,” she insisted, “does not mean that we abandon our voice or that we lean into an outdated version of journalism that devalues perspective and prioritizes sameness.”
As the first woman to oversee Sojourners publications, she takes her responsibility seriously. “It’s always good to have more women in leadership,” she says, adding that she wants to “be an example” for her two daughters “that women can and should be placed in leadership positions in ways that draw upon their strength. I think it’s important that we see more representation of that across the board in media, but also in other sectors,” she says.
Grappling with more work responsibilities and virtual school during a pandemic, she says, has not been easy. Indeed, Villarreal has written about the challenges parents face during this time of crisis. But there also has been a benefit. Her seven-year-old daughter has a much better understanding of what she does as work, she says. Indeed, she seems to have been inspired by it. This summer, her daughter “decided to start her own magazine,” Villarreal says. “And so she did, she just stapled together a bunch of pieces of paper and created a name for a magazine and asked her dad to print copies of them and sent them to family members, and asked for $5 per subscription.”
After putting out two issues of the magazine, Villarreal’s daughter has opted to expand her media empire. “She decided to start a podcast,” her mother says with pride.
