Diane Winston has worked as a reporter for several of the nation's leading newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun, Dallas Morning News, and The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army(1999) and co-editor of Faith in the Market: Religion and the Rise of Urban Commercial Culture (2002). She has directed religion and media projects at New York University and Northwestern University.

She holds a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University, a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. from Brandeis University.