In 2001, Hotline, one of the first online news sites, asked ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, "Who is the most important person in Washington, D.C. that no one has ever heard of?" He replied, "Michael Sean Winters." At the time, Winters was General Manager at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café, a cultural institution on Dupont Circle, a post he held for 16 years.
In 2003, Winters went to work as a speechwriter for General Wesley Clark, and later served as communications director for a top-tier congressional campaign. In 2008, he published his first book, Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats. The next year, he joined the National Catholic Reporter as a columnist and he has been there ever since. His columns focus on politics, religion and the estuary where the two collide. In 2012, he published a biography of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, God’s Right Hand: How Jerry Falwell Made God a Republican and Baptized the American Right.
In addition to NCR, Winters serves at the U.S. correspondent for The Tablet, the London-based, international Catholic newsweekly. He has also written for The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.