Mary McGrory:The First Queen of Journalism
Interview with John Norris
November 11, 2016Sign Up to listen to full interview.
About John Norris
John Norris is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. He has served in a number of senior roles in government, international institutions, and nonprofits, including with the United Nations, the State Department, and the International Crisis Group. John has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and numerous other publications.
Interview Summary
Mary McGrory was the singular feminine voice from the highest perches of politics and she didn’t reach there by luck.
John Norris, the executive director of the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at American Progress, offers the context in which Mary succeeded in the political world, at a time when most women were relegated to office jobs.
Norris writes with political credentials and an understanding that comes with the long history of being near the seats of power in Washington, D.C.
Key Topics
- What was Mary McGrory’s background?
- Why were women so rare in political journalism and how did it all change in the late 1950s?
- How hard was it for Mary to break the career dominated by men?
- Why was Mary said to have, during the McCarthy hearing time, more courage than most of the men involved?
- How did Mary McGrory refuse to conform in the age of conformity?
- From U.S. Presidents, presidential campaigns to the U.S. Congress, who were the most illustrious figures that Mary’s journalism covered?
- Why did political leaders want to talk to her?
- How did Mary McGrory’s writing convey her liberal views?
- How did she earn to be enemy number 20 on President Nixon’s list?
- As a newspaper columnist, Mary McGrory often advised politicians that she favored but she never disclosed that.
- Mary’s career spanned 50 years from the Army-McCarthy hearings to the invasion of Iraq.
