Mary Jordan (journalist)

For other people named Mary Jordan, see Mary Jordan (disambiguation).

Mary Catherine Jordan (born November 10, 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist for the Washington Post. She is a writer and editor and is also head of content for Washington Post Live, which organizes political debates, conferences and news events for the media company. She has written on U.S. politics, the American education system and many other subjects. With her husband, Post journalist Kevin Sullivan, Jordan ran the newspaper's bureaus in Tokyo, Mexico City and London. Jordan has written from nearly 40 countries and also been a frequent commentator on BBC Television.

Early life and career

Jordan, a daughter of Irish immigrants, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Georgetown University in 1983 and earned a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1984. In 1989-90, Jordan was awarded a Nieman Fellowship by Harvard University.

Jordan began her Post career as an intern for the Style section, crisscrossed the country writing about colleges and schools as the national education reporter, and covered Virginia and national politics.

For a year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, she studied W. B. Yeats and other Irish poets. She was given her first job in the newspaper business by Irish author and editor Tim Pat Coogan, who hired her to write a column in The Irish Press. She enrolled in Japanese language classes at Georgetown University before moving to Tokyo for four years and studied Spanish on a post-graduate fellowship at Stanford University before moving to Mexico for five years.

Currently, Jordan moderates many high-profile forums for the Washington Post including the “The 40th Anniversary of Watergate” in June 2012 that featured key Watergate figures including former White House counsel John Dean, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

She hosted the 2010 Maryland gubernatorial debate between Governor Martin O'Malley and former Governor Robert Ehrlich, and moderated a rare sit-down with Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, and other owners of Washington's sports teams.

Among the many newsmakers she has interviewed: singer and songwriter Paul McCartney, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner Henry Kissinger, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Benjamin Arellano Felix, one of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins. Jordan has written extensively about injustices and discrimination against women around the world including articles about the exceedingly low conviction rate of rape in Britain and the unfortunate girls in India denied schooling solely because they were not born male.

Career Recognition and Awards

Jordan and Sullivan won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their Post series on the "horrific conditions in Mexico's criminal justice system and how they affect the daily lives of people," as the Pulitzer Board described. Along with four Post photographers, Jordan and Sullivan were also finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their series of stories on the difficulties women face around the world. The Pulitzer jury called the series a "sensitive examination of how females in the developing world are often oppressed from birth to death, a reporting project marked by indelible portraits of women and girls and enhanced by multimedia presentations."

Jordan and Sullivan authored The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail (The Penguin Press, 2005). In 2006, the book won the Christopher Award, which "salutes media that affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”

Jordan and Sullivan are currently writing a book with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, two of the women kidnapped and held for nearly a decade by Ariel Castro in Cleveland. It is to be published by Viking in 2015.

Jordan and Sullivan have also won numerous other awards including the George Polk Award for their coverage of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and awards from the Overseas Press Club of America and the Society of Professional Journalists.

External links

Selected Works from 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning stories

• Disparate Justice Imprisons Mexico's Poor
• In Mexico, an Unpunished Crime
• Mexico's Children Suffer in "Little Jails"
• Convicts are Condemned to a Paradise in Mexico

Selected Works from Pulitzer Prize-finalist series on the difficulties facing women

• 'This is the Destiny of Girls'
• In Affluent Germany, Women Still Confront Traditional Bias
• In Britain, Rape Cases Seldom Result in a Conviction

Other Selected Works

• Plugging the Planet Into the World
• Middle Class Plunging Back Into Poverty
• Death of 3 Salesmen - Partners in Suicide
• A Hymn to Yesterday: Paul McCartney Premieres His Choral Work, an Elegy for Linda

Poynter Institute Interview with Sullivan and Jordan

• Shoulder to Shoulder: The Art and Chaos of Collaboration