Hiley Ward:
The idea comes first, then he writes quickly

Many of Hiley Ward's books have come out of what he was doing at the time. He wrote God and Marx Today in 1968 after writing a 10-part series on Eastern Europe for the Detroit Free Press and the Knight-Ridder news service. Textbooks, he said, tend to be more demanding. While he said he can write a trade book in as little as 10 days, his latest textbook, Mainstreams of American Media History took four years. Ward has also written Professional Newswriting, Reporting in Depth, Magazine and Feature Writing and My Friend's Beliefs: A Young Reader's Guide to World Religions, which he says is his best-selling book: "I'm still getting royalties after 10 years." He said writing a textbook and then using it to teach is the one drawback: "Once you've put everything you know about a topic into a textbook, what else do you have to say?"

Ward said he decided on a journalism career because he always liked to write. He was also interested in religion. So he combined the two and has made a career out of writing about religion. He began his career part time as a news assistant and feature writer for the national Methodist Christian Advocate, worked four years as editor of the 1.3 million circulation Sunday Pix, and edited a weekly in Michigan. He was religion editor/writer for 14 years for the Detroit Free Press, which nominated him for a Pulitzer in deadline reporting. Later he was also a member of a Free Press team that later won the Pulitzer. At the Free Press he covered  cults by infiltrating them incognito across the country. He also covered the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, and the Popes. He covered all four sessions of the Vatican Council, followed Billy Graham to Europe, and led a press tour to the Near East, which resulted in a 16-part series for Knight-Ridder.

He started writing books in his mid-20s by submitting a synopsis and outline which expanded the discussion of a very controversial article he had written for Christian Century magazine. The first publisher he contacted, Macmillan, immediately contracted the book without asking for any sample chapters. Ward rarely writes sample chapters and generally works without an agent. For the article, "Is Tithing Christian?" (answer no) and for the book that came out of it, "Creative Giving," he was able to use his research skills in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. He followed the first book with another published by Macmillan, Space Age Sunday, which treated the Sabbath and Sunday as a foreign concept to Christianity. He has two post-graduate degrees from two seminaries and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Ward also served as president of the Religion Newswriting Association of the United States and Canada.

He taught at Temple University for 20 years, where he also served as journalism chair. He retired in 1997. Ward always told his students to prepare for two different careers in journalism: "All journalists, with a few exceptions, go into something else in middle life. Factors at any given employment aren't always constant. There's also a lot of pressure at a big paper." Once journalists gain experience, he said, they can move up to where there's more money and where they can use their expertise.

As a teacher, Ward said, the most rewarding part was seeing his students' results. He geared all student assignments toward publication, he said, even media history students: "Since I edited Media History Digest, my media history students could get published there." Many of his students won awards.

He entered Mainstreams into the running for the 1998 Pulitzer Award, but didn't get mentioned. Although most Pulitzers go to trade books and articles, Ward said he entered his text because "the Pulitzer is very unpredictable." He said he geared Mainstreams for the student, making it reader-friendly and adding humor with cartoons and humor art.

In 1999, Ward was awarded a Sidney Kobre Award for lifetime achievement in media history by the American Journalism Historians Association.

Now retired, Ward has combined his love of theology with his passion for fiction writing with his recently published humor-mystery novel, Murder, By God! He is working on another book, an historical novel tentatively titled The Apostles's Woman, based on the life of St. Peter's wife.

He lives "in the country" with his wife, journalist Joan Bastel, who is managing editor of the daily The Intelligencer, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. "I highly recommend retirement. I live in the country. I have an in-ground swimming pool, woods and wildlife, grass to cut and easy access to New York and Washington. It's a good life." Ward has four children: Laurel, Marcy, Carolee and Dianne. Diane is the chief deputy Hennepin County attorney in Minnesota.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 1998