{"id":6171,"date":"2016-11-04T08:18:26","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T12:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6171"},"modified":"2016-11-04T08:18:26","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T12:18:26","slug":"mary-mcgrory-the-first-queen-of-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6171","title":{"rendered":"****Mary McGrory: The First Queen of Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"washington-star\"

The old Washington Star building; photo: wikimedia<\/p><\/div>\n

By John Norris \u2013 You think women in journalism have a long way to go when you consider how being young, glamorous, blonde of hair and white of tooth seem to be hiring criteria, and when you learn how sexual harassment of them is more common than seems possible in 2016 (for organizations that make their living exposing secrets, after all). But then you read Mary McGrory\u2019s compelling life story, written by John Norris\u2014a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress\u2014and realize the distance traveled is pretty far after all.<\/p>\n

McGrory was from Boston, the first person in her Irish Catholic family to finish college, and she began her newspaper career at the bottom of a very tall ladder. She worked for a time in Boston, as an assistant to the Herald Traveler<\/em>\u2019s literary editor, but the quality of her writing propelled her to a position as assistant book critic at the Washington Star<\/em>. The nation\u2019s capital in 1947 was a boomtown, full of change, openness, mobility.<\/p>\n

Six years later, Mary\u2019s badgering of Star<\/em> editor Newby Noyes led him to assign her to write a series of political profiles, and Mary began spending time with the men she\u2019d be writing about for the next half-century, including new Senate minority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson.<\/p>\n

The positive reception the profiles received garnered her a plum assignment: covering the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. From there she covered the Eisenhower-Stevenson campaign of 1956, becoming one of the nation\u2019s most respected reporters and colorful commentators on the political scene.<\/p>\n

After the Washington Star<\/em> folded in 1981, the Washington Post<\/em> snatched her up. She wrote for that paper for twenty-two more years, though the Star<\/em> was always her first love. She covered multiple Presidential campaigns, the Kennedy presidency was a miracle for Mary, pushing all her loyalty buttons\u2014Boston, her faith, and her admiration of the family.<\/p>\n

The fates of those brothers were intimately, personally felt. By contrast, she loathed Richard Nixon: \u201cIf he were a horse, I would not buy him.\u201d Her name appeared on his infamous \u201cenemies list.\u201d Regarding the Gore-Bush campaign of 2000, she said the race was a \u201cbattle between the unlikeable and the unprepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although well known for her scorching prose, Mary\u2019s life off the page is also fascinating. It seems she had one or more affairs with prominent politicians and journalists, and LBJ once propositioned her. She was a great party-goer and -giver. Her entire time in Washington, she regularly volunteered at St. Ann\u2019s Infant and Maternity Home\u2014a refuge for young unmarried women\u2014and arranged with Ethel Kennedy for the children to have swimming parties at Hickory Hill, the Robert Kennedy family home in Virginia. She persuaded Hillary Clinton to visit at Christmas in 1995, the year journalist Tim Russert played Santa Claus. These children were the stand-ins for the children Mary, never married, didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

Indefatigable Mary McGrory, pioneer woman in journalism, astute and opinionated, winner of a Four Freedoms Award and a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, mentor to women journalists, had a stroke at her desk in 2003 and her health\u2014and worse, her powers of speech\u2014never recovered. Her simple tombstone in Antrim, Mass., reads exactly the way she wanted it to:\u00a0 name, dates, and the inscription \u201cNewspaper Woman and Volunteer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball is what we were, and football is what we have become.\u201d–Mary McGrory<\/p><\/blockquote>\n