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The Top 100: Writers & media 
Michael Daly
At the heart of Michael Daly is a street reporter. And New York City
is his beat.
On a cold January morning I stop on Broadway and 29th Street to buy
a Daily News. Its front page, under a headline “Finally at Peace,”
shows a picture of Nixzmary Brown, the little girl who died, allegedly
at the hands of an abusive stepfather.
As I turn, Michael Daly is standing there and after rudimentary greeting,
he tells me why. Pointing at a nondescript phone booth he says, “That’s
where that little girl’s stepfather beat up another man two years
ago. Crazy – in this city you can get locked up for beating up an
adult but not a little girl.” The next day’s paper would carry
Daly’s column. “If the investigators wondered whether Cesar
Rodriguez posed a threat to 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, they might have
tried a rudimentary records check.
“This would have shown that a chance encounter with a stranger once
triggered a rage so blind, Rodriguez punched the man numerous times, bludgeoned
him with a pay phone receiver and cut him with a box cutter,” Daly
wrote in an account of the beating.
Daly had done his own investigation, not sitting in his office or on Google,
the old-fashioned way: by getting out and getting the information. It’s
what makes him a great columnist and reporter.
Presently a columnist with the New York Daily News, Daly was born on
May 19, 1951 in Bethesda, Maryland. He graduated Yale University in 1974
and began journalism at Flatbush Life in Brooklyn. He has also worked
at the Village Voice and New York magazine.
The author of a novel, Underground, he is currently writing The God of
Surprises, a biography of Fire Chaplain Mychal Judge, who perished at
the World Trade Center and lives on in the hearts of many. He was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his columns in 2001.
Daly, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Dinah Prince, and two daughters,
Sinead and Bronagh, has made many trips to Ireland with his Dublin-born,
Cork-reared father. His mother is buried in Bantry, overlooking the bay.
When Daly was a youngster he attended 16 grammar schools (“my father
was a restless soul, but one who thought I should be educated as well
as shifted about from place to place”). “During my family’s
many moves,” recalled Daly, “Ireland remains my spiritual
touchstone.” - PH
Maureen Dowd
It was a year of good news and bad news for New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd.
She published, to great attention and acclaim, a new book called Are Men
Necessary. In the book, she used all of her acclaimed literary charms
to examine 21st-century romance, with the mix of seriousness and humor
that has made her such a well-read author.
But Dowd’s Irish-American mother also died last year at the age
of 97. Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, has said
that her mother Peggy always wanted to be a writer. Maureen made that
clear in a wonderful essay she wrote after Peggy died. Being Irish had
been very important to Dowd’s mother.
She loved Ronald Reagan, and when he landed in a firestorm, she’d
write to tell him to “buck up,” Dowd wrote. “She also
appreciated Bill Clinton–his sunny style, his self-wounding insecurity
and his work on the Ireland peace process–and would write to compliment
him as well.” Dowd added: “She wrote to any member of Congress
who made what she considered the cardinal sin of referring to statesman
Edmund Burke as British, rather than Irish.”
Peggy Dowd’s writing career was not as grand as her daughter’s.
She had a column in the National Hibernian Digest. Then in 1972, Peggy
made her debut, at 63, as a protester. “After Bloody Sunday, when
British soldiers fired on a Catholic demonstration in Londonderry, Northern
Ireland, killing 13 people, Mom went to the Kennedy Center in Washington
to picket the British ambassador, who was going to a performance of the
Royal Scots Guards. She proudly wore her green Irish tweed cape and waved
a placard reading, ‘Stop killing innocent civilians.’”
Born in Washington, D.C., Dowd received a B.A. degree in English literature
from Catholic University in Washington in 1973. She has been a columnist
for the Times
Op-Ed page since 1995. She is known for her clever political observations
and blistering take on the Bush administration in her book Bush World.
-TD
Jim Dwyer
Jim Dwyer, whose parents Phil and Mary were born in Kerry and Galway
respectively, is already a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose books
and newspaper work have earned him respect all over the globe.
What’s next for Dwyer? Well, this year he added Hollywood mover
and shaker to his resumé. That’s exaggerating things just
a little. But given the work Dwyer put into his latest book (a film version
of which is planned for 2007), this should not be surprising.
Dwyer, with Kevin Flynn, a pair of Irish-American New York Times reporters,
produced what has been called the most detailed and intimate account of
the attack on the twin towers. Their book 102 Minutes: The Untold Story
of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, tells the stories of ordinary
people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others.
The title states the exact amount of time that passed from the time the
first plane hit the towers until they both crumbled.
Dwyer and Flynn interviewed hundreds of rescue workers and survivors for
the book. They also read through thousands of pages of oral histories,
phone calls, e-mail messages and radio transmissions.
Throughout the book, disturbing questions are posed about New York’s
response to emergency.
Given all of this, perhaps it’s not surprising that a movie deal
was eventually signed. Screenwriter Billy Ray is already penning a big-screen
version of 102 Minutes. Prior to 102 Minutes, Dwyer published a book about
the first attack on the World Trade Center entitled Two Seconds Under
the World.
He also co-authored Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other
Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted with Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.
Dwyer’s reporting has taken him to Northern Ireland and, most recently,
to war-torn Iraq.
Dwyer attended Fordham and Columbia University. He and his wife Cathy
live in New York with their daughters, Maura and Catherine.
In an interview late last year, Dwyer explained how his Irish immigrant
parents affected his love of reading, particularly his favorite book,
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
“To a 12-year-old, the journey of the Dust Bowl people was a revelation.
My parents were immigrants who settled in New York, and I suppose the
Joads’ struggle to make another place in the world for themselves
was especially captivating. For the first time, it seemed that a writer
not only could invent a world but could put his shoulder against real
places and make a difference.” -TD
T.J. English
The sweeping Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster,
T.J. English’s latest book, looks at crime lords from before the
famine right up to present-day gangsters such as Boston’s Whitey
Bulger.
Along the way we meet Kansas City’s Tom Pendergast, who helped Harry
Truman make it to the White House.
There’s Mickey Spillane, the “gentleman gangster” of
New York’s West Side who reminded some of the Tom Hanks character
in Road to Perdition.
There’s Vincent Coll who more than earned his nickname “Mad
Dog.” And Danny Greene, who used union ties and explosives to carve
out a criminal niche for himself in the not-particularly-Irish city of
Cleveland.
This book is really the first comprehensive look at the Irish-American
underworld.
T.J. English was one of ten children raised in an Irish Catholic family
in Tacoma, Washington. His ancestors came to the U.S. during the famine
and settled in the hardscrabble, heavily Irish town of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The family drifted westward, but as soon as English turned 21 he went
to New York City.
When he was not driving a taxi he was writing for Irish America. It was
there that English began covering the notorious trial that centered around
Mickey Featherstone and the Irish Westies gang which operated out of Manhattan’s
West Side. In 1990 he published The Westies which became a best-seller
and New York Times notable book.
Later, English published Born to Kill: America’s Most Notorious
Vietnamese Gang and the Changing Face of Organized Crime, which was nominated
for an Edgar Award.
English says Paddy Whacked grew out of The Westies, piquing his interest
to see if there were similar histories in other cities.-TD
John Fay
For thousands of people, one man’s labor of love has become their
staple source of information on all things political in Northern Ireland.
Every day, for almost ten years now, John Fay spends about 90 minutes
searching the Internet and online newspapers for news articles and opinion
pieces on Northern Ireland. He then uploads the links on his Newshound
website (spelled www.nuzhound.com because the url www.newshound.com was
taken when he was creating the site).
His original audience was Irish-America, but he soon found that people
all over Ireland and the world were using the site too. Fay links articles
from all points of view in an effort to present a balanced picture on
the political landscape in the North. He does not put his own opinions
on the site. “There are enough opinions out there, and I feel the
articles on the site are a fair representation of what is in the media.”
Fay was born in 1964 in Jackson Heights, Queens, into an Irish-American
family. He has Irish roots on both sides; his mother comes from County
Kildare and his father’s people from County Clare. His grandfather,
also a John Fay, served in the Fighting 69th during World War II.
In 1986 he graduated from Manhattan College with a BS in mathematics
and then spent a year at Trinity College Dublin where he met Caroline,
who would later become his wife. The couple moved back to Dublin in 1991
and after completing his MBA from University College Dublin he became
a management consultant specializing in new media.
In 1996 he learned how to make websites. He decided to create Newshound after
seeing first-hand how people can be influenced, and sometimes misled by
limited media sources. During the 1996 Olympic Games, the general perception
in Ireland was that Irish swimmer Michelle Smith was getting very bad
press in the U.S. After researching various U.S. publications Fay found
that not all were presenting negative opinions, it was just that the Irish
media were playing up the negative stories.
The need for a level playing field was key to Fay starting the site,
and there was no more newsworthy subject in Ireland than the situation
in the North.
“After a slow start, the daily audience grew rapidly in the six
months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement,” Fay says. “Today
the daily audience numbers in the thousands and is as likely to come from
Belfast as Boston.”
On future plans Fay has said that he would like to develop the “News
of the Irish” section, which deals with Irish news both at home
and abroad and which has received positive feedback. He also admits that
should more varied sources emerge in the audio/video market, he would
not rule out adding this feature to the site. In the meantime, however,
he will continue to sift through myriad sources of media in order to provide
quality content for his users. -DOK
 Vince Flynn
Over 60 publishers, agents, and editors rejected author Vince Flynn’s
first book Term Limits. So the 40-year-old St. Paul, Minnesota native
found investors and $20,000 and published the book himself. It soon became
a local best-seller in St. Paul/Minneapolis, and one of those big New
York publishers took notice. Pocket Books reissued the novel in hardcover,
and it did well enough to be printed in paperback, where it soared onto
The New York Times best seller list.
Nine years and seven best-sellers later, Flynn continues to write his
political thrillers from the home he shares with his wife Lysa and their
three children in the Twin Cities.
Flynn has always been a determined individual. Growing up as the fifth
of seven children in an Irish Catholic family he had to be. Flynn’s
father taught English and was a sports coach at St. Thomas Academy, an
all-boys, Catholic, military school. Vince attended the school and later
went on to the University of St. Thomas. Following his graduation from
college, Flynn took a job with Kraft foods as a sales specialist, leaving
after a few years to pursue a career in the Marine Corps.
He was disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program because of a medical
condition. For two years he attempted to appeal the ruling. During those
two years, Flynn decided to overcome one of his biggest obstacles. Flynn,
a dyslexic, was terrified of written language. While attempting to receive
a medical waiver for the military, Flynn began a demanding schedule of
reading and writing.
He read everything he could get his hands on, particularly enjoying political
thrillers. While jogging one day, he formulated an idea for a book of
his own. Term Limits was the result.
Following the success of Term Limits, Flynn introduced his signature
character, CIA counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp, in Transfer of Power.
All of his subsequent best-sellers including the recently released Consent
to Kill, feature Rapp in fast-paced, political adventures.
He also serves as a consultant for the hit Fox drama series 24. Vince
Flynn’s books have all been New York Times best sellers, and are
sold in 12 countries across the globe. -CM
Mary Gordon
Mary Gordon’s latest novel, Pearl, tells the story of a single
New York mother named Maria whose daughter (named Pearl, hence the book’s
title) takes a trip to Ireland and ends up going on a hunger strike. For
reasons that are not completely clear, Pearl has chained herself to a
flagpole in front of the American embassy in Dublin. She has left several
letters, which make it clear that while studying the Irish language, she
has also gotten swept up in the politics of Irish republicanism in the
wake of the 1990s peace process. It is up to Maria, Pearl – and
the reader –- to understand what exactly has led to these traumatic
events.
Pearl is just the most recent evidence of Gordon’s lifelong fascination
with all things Irish and Catholic.
Her earlier novel The Other Side is about five generations of Irish Americans.
In the essay “I Can’t Stand Your Books: A Writer Goes Home,”
Gordon wrote that the Irish “arrived in America already knowing
the language. Yet this knowledge . . . didn’t spare them contempt
of the natives . . . Did it perhaps create in them the illusion that if
they behaved, didn’t make waves, didn’t stand out, they might
be accepted?”
Born Mary Catherine Gordon in 1949 in Far Rockaway, New York, Gordon (Irish
on her mother’s side) has said she has always wanted to be a writer.
Gordon’s mother was a polio victim who had her first (and only)
child at the age of 41.
Mary’s mother, Anne, was a legal secretary who tended to make more
money than Mary’s father, David, whose own deeply conflicted background
was the subject of Gordon’s best-selling 1996 memoir Shadow Man.
Gordon’s father died when she was seven years old, and while researching
his life, she learned of many inconsistencies surrounding his past, including
the fact that, though Gordon was raised in an observant Catholic family,
her father had been born Jewish.
Nevertheless, Gordon has said she was raised in a family that “took
deep pleasure in the liturgical world of the church” and assembled
at her grandmother’s on Tuesday nights to watch Irish-American TV
legend Bishop Fulton Sheen.
Such memories come through in her sometimes harsh but always genuine writings
about religion.
Gordon, who has two children named Anna and David, is currently at work
on a memoir about her mother, who died of heart failure after a long illness
in 2002. -TD
Greg Kelly
Greg Kelly has been a correspondent for the Fox News Channel since 2002.
When he went across the globe to cover the Iraq War, he had credentials
that most TV journalists simply do not have. Before becoming a journalist,
Kelly, whose father is New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, served
in the Marines.
Before becoming a journalist, Kelly spent nine years as a fighter jet
pilot in the United States Marine Corps. During his military service,
Kelly amassed almost 160 aircraft carrier landings and flew over Iraq
in Operation Southern Watch, enforcing the United Nations’ “No-Fly
Zone.” He currently holds the rank of major in the Marine Corp Reserves.
In recent years, he’s been attending events organized by the influential
circle of Irish-American New York writers, politicos and other fields
known as the “Kelly Gang.”
Before moving to Fox, Kelly was a reporter for New York 1 News and a morning
anchor in Binghamton, New York.
Apparently, his transition to the world of TV journalism has been a smooth
one. He is the subject of numerous fan web sites, which are clogged with
fawning comments from fans. He has also won numerous awards from his journalistic
peers.
Kelly has even branched out into print journalism, writing an insightful
opinion piece for The New York Times just before the 2004 election. Kelly
argued that both Republicans and Democrats were trying to use the issue
of U.S. troop morale for their advantage.
“A rifle platoon commander in Falluja knows his unit’s morale
is not the president’s responsibility; it’s his. I speak from
experience,” Kelly wrote. “I served in the Marine Corps under
two Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and one
Democrat, Bill Clinton.
I flew missions over Iraq enforcing the no-flight zone in the late 1990’s.
And I saw combat with the Army as a journalist, embedded with the Third
Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“In all of that time, the morale of the units I served in or beside
was never determined by politicians, pundits or the press. High or low,
the spirits of our men and women in Iraq stem from more mundane concerns.”
-TD
Keith J. Kelly
It’s more than 25 years since a fresh-faced young reporter named
Keith Kelly broke the story of the impending IRA hunger strike in Long
Kesh prison, making the front page of the Chicago Catholic in September
1980.
Today, Kelly, who for the past eight years has been the Media Ink columnist
at the New York Post, is known as one of America’s “most influential
media reporters” (New York magazine).
Before joining the Post Kelly worked at the Daily News (1997-98) and prior
to that he was a senior editor at Advertising Age. He has also written
many stories for Irish America over the years, including in 1992, “Running
with the Bulls in Pamplona,” and in 2002, “Farewell to a Cop
with a Big Heart,” the story of Moira Ann Smith who was killed on
9/11. He has also contributed this issue’s cover story on Police
Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Kelly is the founder of the Kelly Gang, a rapidly growing group of, you
guessed it, people named Kelly, which draws members from all walks of
life.
The Kelly Gang, which is nonprofit, operates an annual fundraiser, proceeds
from which have gone towards the education of the children of journalist
and editor Michael Kelly, who died while covering the war in Iraq, and
to Sgt. Ryan Kelly, who lost a leg in Iraq, to help his efforts and work
with the Wounded Warrior Project.
This year’s fundraiser, which takes place in Michael’s Pub
in New York City on March 17, will aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, through
Catholic Charties in New Orleans, which is headed by Jim Kelly.
A third-generation Irish American who traces his ancestors to counties Mayo,
Westmeath and Longford, Kelly is married to Pat Walsh (daughter of Kerry
football great Eddie Walsh) and they have three children: Ruaire (8),
Luke (6), and Eamon (3). – PH
 Thomas Lynch
It can safely be said that Thomas Lynch is the only undertaker-turned-writer
on the Irish American literary scene these days.
His latest book, published last year, took a close look at the often complicated
relationship between the Irish and Irish America.
Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans was Lynch’s follow-up to
his National Book Award finalis, The Undertaking as well as Bodies in
Motion and at Rest. Lynch, who has also published three collections of
poetry, first visited Ireland in 1970 to meet family in west Clare, a
land of “spinsters and farmers, local heroes, poets, clergy, and
corner boys,” according to Lynch.
The past, present and future collide in Booking Passage. A cousin dies
and Lynch prods another to look into some modern conveniences such as
TV and running water.
But the modernist Lynch (who lives in Milford, Michigan) also learns a
thing or two along the way about his family’s traumatic past. Lynch
also offers up brainy digressions on the Catholic Church, alcoholism,
and his own troubled personal life (one marriage ended but he tried another
one).
In a review of Booking Passage, the influential journal Publisher’s
Weekly wrote: “This is a deeply thought-out book is filled with
poetry, pathos, triumph and lots of Irish laughter.”
Along with books and poetry Lynch’s work has appeared in The New
Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Esquire, Newsweek, The Boston
Globe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,
The Irish Times, and The Times of London.
Ultimately, Booking Passage has something for most Irish American readers:
fascinating thoughts about Ireland and the U.S., poetic language and provocative
thoughts on a wide range of topics. -TD
Regina McBride
In a recent interview, novelist Regina McBride – who last year
published her latest Irish novel The Marriage Bed to great reviews –
was asked about her deep personal connection to Ireland.
“Mine is an Ireland of the imagination, a mythic Ireland,”
McBride answered. “My parents were Irish-American. Neither had ever
been to Ireland. When I was two we left a New York Irish community and
moved to New Mexico. I think my parents always felt in exile there. They
romanticized the ‘old country,’ feeling nostalgic for a place
they had never been. I’m afraid I was afflicted with the same mysterious
longing.”
McBride has put this “affliction” to great use in her books
such as The Land of Women. That novel (which was, fittingly, set in Ireland
and Santa Fe) centered on Irish mythology and a young woman named Fiona
whose relationship with her parents was, to say the least, complicated.
McBride’s latest novel The Marriage Bed takes the theme of parent-child
relationships into even darker territory.
Tragedy drives McBride’s protagonist Deirdre O’Breen from
the Great Blasket Island off the southwest coast of Ireland to Dublin.
Deirdre is just 14 years old. She has lived her life on an isolated island
but now finds herself living in a tumultuous city at the turn of the 20th
century.
Hoping to find a place for herself in Dublin, Deirdre goes to a convent
school and plans to become a nun.
It is there that Deirdre’s life become intertwined with that of
another young girl, Bairbre, as well as her determined, devout mother,
who plots to arrange a marriage between Deirdre and her son Manus. Like
Ireland itself, Manus and Deirdre face the question of whether or not
they will move forward peacefully and happily, or instead will be haunted
by the tragic past.
McBride moved to Ireland when she was twenty-three.
“I did not go there to trace relatives,” she has said. “I
wanted to find my own Ireland. I do not claim to write about the country
in grittily realistic terms. It is more a dream territory of my imagination
which has many parallels to the real world.”
As readers of The Marriage Bed and McBride’s other novels can attest,
she has created a unique literary vision of Ireland.
Frank McCourt
Though he didn’t begin chronicling it until he reached his sixties,
Frank McCourt’s life is now among the most vividly recorded in publishing
history. In Angela’s Ashes, of course, he recounted his grim years
in Brooklyn and then Limerick, and the circumstances which led him to
leave Ireland for New York City.
Then came ’Tis, McCourt’s second memoir, which followed the
ups and downs of family life and love life while he struggled to make
a living in New York.
McCourt’s third book started out as a novel. But, as he has suggested
in interviews, real life just kept coming back to him. So, his third book
was another memoir.
This time he filled in the one gap that was remaining in his life story.
In Teacher Man, which came out in September 2005, McCourt writes with
customary wit and wisdom about his three decades as a New York City high
school teacher.
McCourt began his teaching journey thirty years ago at a tough Staten
Island vocational school, back when Irish students were nearly as common
a sight in a New York City classroom as black, Hispanic and Asian kids
are today.
His first teaching day was a tough one. Students were not paying attention,
and it was all downhill from there. At one point a sandwich was thrown
across the room, and McCourt actually picked it up from the floor and
ate it.
His supervisor was not impressed. However, it was just this kind of
unorthodox classroom management skill which would — eventually —
make McCourt a top-notch teacher.
McCourt’s students always seemed to want to talk about anything
to forestall actual learning. In Teacher Man, McCourt says he turned this
trick on its head. He told the kids all sorts of stories about his life
in Ireland, at first to keep them entertained, but later to slyly teach
them lessons about narrative and story structure.
As McCourt puts it: “In the high school classroom you are a drill
sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a
low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code
enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a
tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest,
a mother-father-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist,
the last straw.”
Cynthia McFadden &Terry Moran
When Ted Koppel retired from the ABC show Nightline in November after
42 years with the network, he left big shoes to fill. As new co-anchors,
Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran along with Martin Bashir are proving
up to the challenge. Thanks to their knowledgebility, wide-ranging interests
and enthusiasm, the show continues to thrive.
As a co-anchor for both Nightline and PrimeTime Live, McFadden is no stranger
to hard work and award-winning journalism.
Cynthia McFadden joined ABC News in February 1994 as the network’s
legal correspondent. Since coming to the network she has served as correspondent
for PrimeTime Live and 20/20, and as one of the hosts of 20/20 Downtown.
In January 1999 McFadden anchored the award-winning ABC News special Target
America: The Terrorist War, in which she reported on the African Embassy
bombings.
In previous seasons McFadden reported a ground breaking investigation
into the sale of women from the former Soviet Union into virtual slavery
in Israel (for which she won an Overseas Press Club Award); provided an
intimate portrait of female gang members in Los Angeles; and presented
the first undercover look at the murder of infants by their parents who
suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
She has investigated the country’s largest public utility company,
exposing their dumping of known cancer-causing agents into the ground
water of several small California towns (the story later became widely
known through the Erin Brockovich movie); investigated the tragic death
of Jonathan Larson, the creator of Rent; and has interviewed numerous
celebrities, including George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Liza Minnelli,
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and magician David Copperfield.
McFadden’s one-hour special, Judgment at Midnight marked the first
time cameras were ever allowed on any death row cell block to document
the final weeks of an inmate’s life. The broadcast was accorded
tremendous critical acclaim and numerous awards, as was her hour-long
look at prostitution, Women in the Shadows.
McFadden’s work has received numerous awards, including the Emmy,
three Cine Golden Eagles, the Ohio State Award, two Silver Gavels from
the American Bar Association, the Grand Award of the New York Festival,
and the Blue Ribbon of the American Film Festival. She was twice a finalist
for the CableACE’s Anchor of the Year.
A native of Maine, McFadden graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude
from Bowdoin College. She received her law degree from Columbia University.
She traces her Irish heritage to County Clare.
An award-winning journalist and chief White House correspondent for ABC
News, Terry Moran is more than qualified for the job of Nightline co-anchor.
Based in Washington, D.C. Moran has reported on all aspects of the Bush
administration in his role as White House Correspondent. He has traveled
the world reporting on the president’s foreign trips and meetings
with world leaders.
Moran was extensively involved with coverage of the events of September
11, 2001 and continues to follow the war on terror. Moran’s first
hand reportage from Iraq has given him a unique view on the war, having
covered the issue from the perspective of the president who started it
and also from the viewpoint of the American soldiers who have fought in
it.
Perhaps it is his ability to see a story from different perspectives
that has resulted in Moran’s success as a journalist. Before he
began covering politics and policy, Moran spent ten years covering law.
Working as the primary ABC News correspondent assigned to the Supreme
Court from 1998-1999, Moran filed many important stories.
Among his most important work was his piece on former death-row inmates
freed when evidence of their innocence came to light. Moran was awarded
the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award by the Death Penalty Information
Center.
Aside from being a news anchor Moran has written many articles for The
New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic magazine, where
he began his career in journalism.
Moran traces his roots to the West of Ireland, where his great-grandfather
came from Mayo.
 Sean McManus
Sean McManus has served as President of CBS Sports since November 1996.
In the ensuing decade, McManus has succeeded in making the network number
one in sports broadcasting. Now, as the new President of CBS News, he
will attempt to repeat his sports success in the newsroom.
As President of CBS Sports, McManus acquired almost all of sport’s
major events for the network. CBS brokered a deal to broadcast the National
Football League until 2011, airing the Super Bowl every three years. He
also developed a deal with the NCAA that left CBS with the exclusive rights
to the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. CBS Sports also
broadcasts major golf events, including the PGA Tour and the PGA Championship,
as well as the U.S. Open tennis tournament. As President of CBS Sports,
McManus is responsible for all aspects of production, including hiring
sportscasters, advertising and promotion.
It was his high level of involvement, and ultimately his success at making
CBS the leading network for sports that led to McManus’s selection
as President of CBS News in October 2005. He is the second person in network
broadcast history to serve as president of both a news and sports divisions
at the same time.
McManus has assumed the presidency of the news division at a time when
CBS finds itself playing catch-up with the other networks. Following the
departure of veteran Evening News anchor Dan Rather, McManus’s biggest
task is finding a suitable replacement. In a press release following his
appointment, McManus said, “The business is changing and the challenges
are many. I’m confident that, while maintaining the standards and
values of this great organization, we can build upon its legacy and become
even more successful, competitive, and relevant to the viewers and the
nation we serve.”
While some critics have wondered about his lack of news experience, many
choose instead to point to the similarities between sports and news broadcasting.
In an article for USA Today in November 2005, Hannah Storm, a veteran
sports caster for NBC who now works for CBS News, said, “News today
is about people, characters, storytelling. Even with a hard-news event,
you’ve got to tell a story…[McManus] understands what makes
good, entertaining television, and he also understands storytelling.”
Sean McManus splits his time between New York and Connecticut with his
wife and children. He is the son of sports broadcaster Jim McKay and graduated
from Duke University in 1977. He previously worked for both ABC and NBC
Sports.
Kelly O’Donnell
A few days a week NBC News White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell
posts on the NBC News blog “The Daily Nightly.” The blog allows
NBC correspondents to interact with readers and relate information that
would not usually make it into a network broadcast. In her posts, O’Donnell
offers readers a glimpse of a White House press event from the inside
out.
In one post, she writes about President Bush’s sense of humor
when answering questions; in another she relates information from an off-camera
press conference with the White House press secretary. O’Donnell
responds to her readers in the trademark calm, professional manner that
has served her well over her many years as a news anchor.
O’Donnell graduated from Northwestern University in 1987 and got
her start in broadcast journalism producing and reporting local news at
WJW-TV in Cleveland, Ohio. While at WJW, O’Donnell won a regional
Emmy Award for her report on a prison riot in Lucasville, Ohio. She joined
NBC as a correspondent in 1994.
She appears regularly on NBC Nightly News and the Today show. She has
worked as a correspondent at four Olympic Games, and has covered such
important events as September 11th, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the
Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
O’Donnell traveled to Iraq in 2003 where she reported with the
Third Infantry Division in Fallujah. She has a solid background in political
reporting. In 1996 she reported on Bob Dole’s campaign for President.
In 2004 she followed the presidential race, covering the Democratic primaries,
John Kerry’s campaign, the presidential debates, the Democratic
convention, and President Bush’s inauguration.
She was made the White House correspondent in May of 2005. In addition
to her Emmy, O’Donnell has won two first-place awards from the Los
Angeles Press Club, and was inducted into the Ohio Radio/Television Broadcasters
Hall of Fame in 2004.
Kelly’s grandparents on both sides come from Ireland. Her mother’s
family is from Oranmore, County galway and her father sides from Donegal
and Kilkeel, County Down.
Peter Quinn
Peter Quinn’s life touches upon many key aspects of the Irish-American
experience, from the horrors of the famine to the halls of political power
to success in the fields of media and publishing.
In 1994 Quinn published The Banished Children of Eve, an epic novel of
New York City and the Irish famine, which won an American Book Award.
Nearly a decade later, Quinn published his second big historical novel,
Hour of the Cat. The novel splits time between Berlin and New York, and
explores the frightening eugenics movement on the eve of Adolf Hitler’s
mad quest for global domination.
Quinn was born and raised in the Bronx. His grandparents were Irish immigrants
who fled the famine and the harsh life that was left in its wake. The
Quinns came from near Holy Cross, in Tipperary, in the 1870s.
“My mother’s mother, Catherine Riordan, was from Blarney.
Her father, Seamus Murphy, was from outside Macroom, also in Cork. I went
back with my mother to his village in the late 1970’s. The priest
said that 200 of the 300 families in the town had Murphy as a last name,
so unless we knew my grandfather’s grandfather’s first name,
it would be hard to trace our line. Things can get complicated in the
Irish countryside,” Quinn told Irish America recently.
Quinn’s father was an engineer but attended law school at night
and went into politics. He was elected a congressman and later became
a judge.
Quinn himself graduated from Manhattan College in 1969 with a degree in
history, and later from Fordham. He later worked as a speechwriter for
politicians such as Mario Cuomo, then in the same capacity for Time Inc.,
where he rose to an executive position in corporate communications.
Along with his brother Tom, he wrote a 1987 TV documentary about McSorley’s
famous New York City saloon and has appeared as a prominent talking head
for acclaimed documentaries such as The Irish in America and New York:
A Documentary Film.
Next up for Quinn is a collection of his personal essays to be published
by Notre Dame University Press. Then Quinn plans to write what he is calling
a “family memoir,” which will look back at the lives and times
of his parents. - TD
Kristen Shaughnessy
How does a girl who never had a TV growing up end up weekend anchor with
New York One News? It was a question I had to put to Kristen Shaughnessy
when we chatted on a Thursday morning, which is akin to the Monday-to-Friday
worker doing an interview on a Sunday!
“I think the TV broke and they [her parents] decided not to replace
it. They wanted us to read books and newspapers and form our own opinions.”
Kristen further developed her analytical skills at Hofstra University,
with a degree in electronic journalism and political science. She honed
her broadcasting skills at radio WGNY in Newburgh, and had her first TV
gig at News Center 6 in Wappinger Falls before joining NY1 News in 1995.
As weekend anchor/breaking news reporter, Kristen has to literally think on
her feet, and sometimes these decisions can save your life, as she found
out on 9/11. She was at Ground Zero and on a pay phone to morning anchor
Pat Kiernan just before the second tower came down.
She reported for several minutes live before literally fleeing for her
life. Her brother Jack was also lucky that day, escaping from the second
tower after the plane hit. “It’s one of those things that
replays in your head, and it was about two days later before the shock
hit,” Kristen told me.
Kristen is a proud Irish-American and is able to trace her Irish roots
back to the mid 19th century. James L. Shaughnessy was born in the southwest
of Ireland in 1850 and later emigrated to America, where he settled in
Northampton, Mass. James’ grandson, Harold Edward, married Jean
Cullen in 1933. Jean Cullen, a former librarian, is Kristen’s grandmother
and is still going strong at the grand old age of 96.
Kristen is immensely proud of her family and laughs as she recalls her
parents’ reaction on hearing about her being chosen for the Top
100. ‘When I got my first job on TV my parents were like, ‘Whatever,’
but they were really excited on hearing my inclusion on this list.”
Kristen is married to Joe Bush and they have two children, Jamie, eight,
and Cara, five. – DOK
John Tierney
John Tierney has made a name for himself at The New York Times by challenging
conventional wisdom on a host of topics ranging from recycling to scandals
in the Catholic Church.
Tierney, whose Irish ancestors came over in the mid-19th century, has
proven to be such an interesting read that he now writes a column for
the Times’ highly influential Op-Ed page Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Tuerney has been with the Times since 1990.
He took a special interest in the recent Catholic Church scandals, which
affected Irish Americans from Boston to San Francisco.
This year, Tierney’s columns have showcased his talents, which are
always described as “contrarian.” While he is hardly a typical
right wing conservative, Tierney doesn’t have much time for what
he views as the unexamined biases of liberal do-gooders. Generally, he
is seen as a libertarian who believes people should often act out of self-interest
rather than because of some highfalutin ideology.
For example, in a February 2006 column, he went against the growing
chorus of people who say Americans consume far too much gas, contributing
to an unstable global situation. Tierney basically said Americans should
use all the gas they want.
Perhaps his most famous article was a 1996 column which dismissed recycling
as a well-intended waste of time.
Tierney is the author of The Best-Case Scenario Handbook (Workman Publishing,
2002) and co-author, with Christopher Buckley, of the comic novel God
Is My Broker: A Monk Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial
Growth.
Before working at the Times Tierney was a globe-trotting freelancer whose
work was published in The Atlantic, Esquire, New York magazine, Newsweek,
Reason, Rolling Stone, Washington Monthly, Playboy, Outside, Reader’s
Digest, National Geographic Traveler, Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, The
Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Tierney, who turns 53 this year, majored in American Studies at Yale
University. He is married and has one child. – TD
 John
Patrick Shanley
Last year was a big one for John Patrick Shanley. He won the Pulitzer
Prize and a Tony Award, both for his play Doubt.
Shanley, who previously won a Best Screenplay Academy Award for the movie
Moonstruck, grew up on Archer Avenue in the Bronx with four siblings in
what was, as he recently told Irish America, “a very predictable
Catholic household where we said the rosary every Friday night on our
knees in the living room.”
Like his brothers Tom and Jim before him, he joined the Marine Corps,
and it is an incident that happened while he was in the Marines which
serves as material for his current play, Defiance, which opened at the
Manhattan Theater Club on February 25.
Meanwhile, Doubt, which is set in the 1960s in a Catholic school in the
Bronx, is still enjoying its run at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and has become
the largest grossing play in the history of Broadway.
“Doubt and Defiance are both about going back and looking at institutions
that you have always had a lot of assumptions about, and questioning whether
they were good or bad, effective or not effective, antiquated or not antiquated,
and making you look at them in a different way,” Shanley said in
the same interview with Irish America.
A prolific writer, Shanley, 55, who graduated from New York University,
first came to the attention of critics in 1984 with his play Danny and
the Deep Blue Sea, with John Turturro winning an Obie Award for his performance.
Shanley has since written at least 24 plays, and he is currently working
on a movie. But, he said, “Defiance is what I’m most excited
about because this is what I want to say right now.”
Shanley, who has two adopted sons with his ex-wife, lives in Brooklyn.
He is engaged to Paula Devicq. – PH
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