Inside an office room in Bayport, three men in jeans and casual shirts swivel on rolling orange chairs, conferring with each other, answering questions, and occasionally turning back toward large computer screens. Books and periodicals surround them. Upbeat music plays softly in the background.

Outside the office, barred doors, massive exterior walls, and guard towers reveal its surprising location: the inside of a maximum security prison. 

“I have to tell you something today that I wish I didn’t have to tell you,” conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said on his Monday program. Limbaugh, 69, said two medical institutions confirmed his diagnosis of advanced lung cancer in late January. The broadcaster has been an influential voice on the right for decades after starting his first radio program in 1988.

Jim Lehrer, the longtime host of the nightly PBS NewsHour, died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, according to the public broadcaster. He was 85.

A Covington Catholic High School student will receive an undisclosed sum from CNN for the way it portrayed a confrontation involving him, his classmates, and a Native American elder outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in January 2019. The news channel on Tuesday settled the defamation lawsuit brought by Nicholas Sandmann over its misleading coverage of him following last year’s March for Life.

In our business a proverb about good news rarely gets the attention it deserves, but a journalist at the start of a new year will be wise to ponder how good news “refreshes the bones” (Proverbs 15:30).

So in late 2019 I began to list the good things overlooked in the mad dash to cover famine, persecution, and war. It’s a necessary exercise, a balancing act to restore perspective, because once you start looking for good news you find it, even in abundance.

Major magazine cover stories and features, thought-provoking Voices columns and reporter Journals, daily news reports from The Sift, and weekly Roundups covering important issues drew readers to WORLD’s website in 2019. The hot-button topics that grabbed your attention and made you click the share button included abortion, sexuality, immigration, and apostasy and scandal in the church.

Click the headline links in our Top 25 countdown and take a trip back through the past 12 months of WORLD’s Christian worldview reporting and commentary.

If I’ve heard the question once, I’ve heard it a hundred times: “Joel, of all the projects you’ve got going at WORLD, which one most deserves my financial help?” It’s almost like hearing, “Of your five daughters, which has given you your favorite grandchildren?”

The truth is that—just as I delight in all my grandchildren—all three of our divisions are undertaking major projects that will need member support. If it weren’t for your support along the way, we couldn’t even consider these projects, let alone start them.