Meg Greenfield

Journalism has an important function in a democracy: to inform the public and to hold the government accountable. Mary Ellen "Meg" Greenfield was an influential figure in journalism for two decades as the editorial editor of the Washington Post (1979-1999) and a columnist for Newsweek (1974-1999).

She was born in 1930 in Seattle. She graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1952. The next year, she went to Cambridge as a Fulbright Scholar to study the poetry William Blake. She read Latin for fun, and especially the writer Plautus. She clearly had a love of words and writing.

She worked for the political magazine The Reporter until 1968, when she began to work for the Washington Post. She worked in the editorial department. Editorials are articles that state the opinion of the newspaper. The topics and stances of the editorials are decided by the editorial review board. Greenfield became the editor of the editorial page in 1979 and held that position until she died two decades later in 1999.

Meg GreenfieldBy Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31232697

She was also a friend of the publisher Katharine Graham, one of the few women running a newspaper. It was under Graham's leadership that the Washington Post rose in stature for its investigative journalism, including the Watergate scandal which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Greenfield won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for "distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning and power to influence public opinion in what the writer conceives to be the right direction." 

Jeanne McManus, who worked under Greenfield said of her: "Meg was a brilliant, funny, charming woman, an editor with razor-sharp instincts and an enormous grasp of politics, foreign policy and local news. Sell AWACs to the Saudis? Meg could draw you a picture of the plane. Decrypt the congressional budget? Meg could spend 20 minutes with it and tell you what Congress was trying to hide. Her radar for spin control was flawless. She never went away for Labor Day weekend because she believed that the administration, any administration, would release a controversial report when the top editors were gone and “the interns were running the paper.” 

"To see how her mind worked, to watch the magnificence of her choice of words and to witness her artful methods of achieving balance and fairness was an education in thinking, writing and journalism itself." 

Watch the Trailer for The Post (2017) directed by Steven Spielberg

Meg Greenfield's character is played by Carrie Coon.