McKay Coppins
McKay Coppins is a national journalist and author. He is currently a staff writer at The Atlantic where he covers politics, religion, and national affairs.
Coppins was born on February 2, 1987, in Massachusetts and raised in Holliston. After earning a degree from Brigham Young University, he worked for Newsweek. While at Newsweek, he broke the story that Jon Huntsman Jr. would resign his ambassadorship in China and run for President of the United States.
During the 2012 presidential election, he worked for BuzzFeed and was an important source on Mitt Romney’s faith. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints himself, Coppins was sought out by other reporters to help them understand and write about aspects of Romney’s faith.[1]
In November 2016, during the presidential primaries, Coppins left BuzzFeed to work for The Atlantic.
In 2015, Coppins published The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House. Walter Russell Mead favorably reviewed the book in Foreign Affairs, writing that it was "[w]idely sourced and compellingly written."[2]
Coppins also wrote a biography of Mitt Romney. Romney: A Reckoning, published in 2023, covers 25 years of American politics, based on 30 interviews with Romney and thousands of private emails, text messages, and diary entries.[3]
- In researching for and writing the book, he observed that Mitt Romney drew distinct lines in his life that he wasn’t willing to cross.
- “[Romney is] an incredibly hard worker . . . he couldn’t help but put in more hours than anybody else. . . . But what he realized was that if he didn't keep himself in check, he would end up completely abdicating his parental responsibilities, his spousal responsibilities, and his responsibilities to the Church. So he drew some bright red lines that he told himself he wouldn’t cross. . . . Because if he didn’t, he wasn’t just going to naturally be a present father and have time for his calling,” Coppins says. “I thought that was illustrative, and so for my own life, I have taken that same lesson.”[4]
In 2020 Coppins had the opportunity to personally interview President Russell M. Nelson for an article in The Atlantic magazine. “He went into the interview feeling slightly torn—he knew that as a reporter he would be asking tough questions, but as a member of the Church he wanted a ‘spiritual catharsis’ from the experience of meeting the prophet, especially during the uncertainty of the pandemic.”
- “I remember feeling like, ‘How can I do both of these things?’ There’s one part of me that needs to be the serious reporter and the other part that needs to be the faithful disciple,” Coppins says.
- When President Nelson entered the room, he asked if they could start with a prayer. President Nelson prayed for each of Coppins’ children by name and invited the Spirit into the room. And then he asked what questions Coppins had for him.
- “I realized in that moment that I could do both. I didn’t have to pretend like I wasn’t a Latter-day Saint to be a good reporter. And I didn’t have to be a bad reporter to be a good Latter-day Saint. I could do all of it. And I wasn’t going to set aside my faith,” Coppins says.
- Coppins remembers President Nelson later commenting during the interview that many things make up our identity: our Church membership, our parenthood, our jobs. But our belief in God and our attempts to follow Jesus Christ are entangled with everything. Coppins strives to live by that truth.
- “I don't want to try to compartmentalize my spiritual life from everything else. It’s all part of who I am,” he says.[5]
Coppins and his wife have four children.
External Sources
Wikipedia, “McKay Coppins” LDS Living, “The question on McKay Coppins’s heart before interviewing the prophet—and why the answer matters to all of us,” by Ellie Smith
