Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd (born January 14, 1952, Washington, D.C., U.S.) is an American reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winning op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Dowd is well-known for her sardonic, humorous, and disputatious writing style.

Dowd attended Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where she graduated with a B.A. in English in 1973. The following year, she was hired as an editorial assistant by the now defunct newspaper The Washington Star, where she was a sports columnist, a reporter, and a feature writer. When the Star folded, Dowd moved to Time magazine. In 1983 she joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter, and in 1986 she became a correspondent for the paper’s Washington bureau, covering politics, presidential campaigns, and the White House. Her national reporting style made her a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. In 1995 Dowd replaced Anna Quindlen as the only female op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 1999 she won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary; the columns for which she was cited concerned the Bill Clinton administration and particularly the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Her political columns were widely considered to be nonpartisan; she was critical of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Dowd authored the books Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004), which discusses the presidencies of both George Bush and George W. Bush, and Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (2005), which presents her view of the conflict between the sexes. In The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics (2016), Dowd critiqued the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.