Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist to Discuss Politics and Journalism in the Clinton Years

Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara, known for her incisive commentary on Massachusetts politics, social policy and criminal justice, will present "Doing It All on Deadline: Real Writing, Real Ethics, and Real People" at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 11, in Smith College's Wright Hall Auditorium.

The talk is free and open to the public and will be followed by an extended question and answer period.

McNamara became a columnist for the Globe in 1996, after 20 years as a reporter, covering everything from the night police beat to the U.S. Congress. A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University, she was a Nieman fellow at Harvard in 1988 and was cited by Boston Magazine in 1987 as the best reporter in Boston. The Robert F. Kennedy Foundation and Sigma Delta Chi, among other organizations, have honored her for public service contributions, particularly for reporting on conditions in the women's prison in Massachusetts, the racial disparity in Boston's infant mortality rates, and the juvenile justice system's approach to teenage killers.

In 1997, McNamara received the Pulitzer Prize for her commentary on Massachusetts people and issues, including a column headlined "I Still Have No Answer," written as a letter to a mother whose daughter was killed in the building where McNamara lived at the beginning of her journalism career.

In addition to her work at the Globe, McNamara is a lecturer in the journalism program at Brandeis University, where she teaches a course on media and public policy.