Maureen Orth Popular Books

Maureen Orth Biography & Facts

Maureen Orth is an American journalist, author, and a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine. She is the founder of Marina Orth Foundation, which has established a model education program in Colombia emphasizing technology, English, and leadership. She is the widow of TV journalist Tim Russert. Orth’s research was the basis of multi-episode documentaries and television films about Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Andrew Cunanan. Early life and education Maureen Orth grew up in the Bay Area of California, the daughter of Helen (Pierotti) Orth and Karl Orth. She has two siblings, Christina Orth and the late Dan Orth. Orth attended Alameda High School. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated in 1964 with a degree in political science. At Berkeley, Orth was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Following her graduation from college, she served in the Peace Corps in Medellín, Colombia, from 1964 to 1966. Orth later earned a master's degree in Journalism and Documentary Film from UCLA in 1969. Career Before launching her career in journalism, Orth worked in Washington, DC and helped organize the hearings for the House Select Subcommittee Environmental Education Act in conjunction with the first Earth Day. Orth began her journalism career in San Francisco in 1970 chronicling issues of the counter culture for the San Francisco Examiner. She was mentored by author Alex Haley. In 1971, she became the West Coast correspondent of The Village Voice and also freelanced for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. In 1972, Orth joined TVTV, a pioneering video group that had obtained a PBS grant to cover both the Republican and Democratic Conventions in Miami, Florida. The resulting films used the first ever footage shot on the convention floor using ½ inch Sony portapack videotape. Orth moved to New York in 1973. She wrote the Ms. Magazine cover story titled “Suffer the Little Children…The American Child-Care Disgrace.” Newsweek Orth was hired as one of the first female writers for Newsweek, covering music, books and movies. She was a plaintiff in a successful 1970 lawsuit claiming that the newsroom discriminated against women. At Newsweek, Orth wrote eight cover stories in five years on subjects including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and The Godfather Part II film. She was the only journalist to report from the notoriously chaotic set of Apocalypse Now in the Philippines. In 1975, Orth took a brief leave of absence from Newsweek to be the assistant to director Lina Wertmuller, in Italy, during the filming of Seven Beauties. This film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. She later wrote about the experience in an article for the magazine. When news broke in August 1977 that Elvis Presley had died, Orth requested to be sent to Memphis, Tennessee to cover the story. She wrote the first news piece to suggest that Presley's official cause of death might not have been a heart attack. She was a contestant on The Gong Show and wrote about it for the magazine. Freelance work Between 1978 and 1980 Orth was a senior editor at New York, and New West Magazines. In 1981-1982 she was the principal correspondent of Newsweek Woman on Lifetime Television. From 1983 to 1984 she was a network correspondent for NBC News. Orth was a contributing editor at Vogue from 1984 to 1989, and a columnist for New York Woman from 1986 to 1990. She has also freelanced for the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Vanity Fair Orth has written for Vanity Fair since 1988 and has been a Special Correspondent for that magazine since 1993. Among the heads of state she has interviewed are Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Argentinian President Carlos Menem, and Irish President Mary Robinson. Orth secured the first interview with Thatcher just months after leaving office. Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Orth traveled to Central Asia to investigate the connection between drugs and terrorism for a piece titled "Afghanistan's Deadly Habit." Orth has investigated pedophile priest Paul Shanley and the Laci Peterson murder. Orth has also written articles on Tom Cruise and Scientology, Madonna, Tina Turner, Karl Lagerfeld and Conrad Black. She chronicled the Colombian hostage rescue of Ingrid Betancourt in a November 2008 piece titled "Inside Colombia's Hostage War" and wrote about Elda Neyis, aka Karina, Colombia's most notorious FARC female revolutionary. Orth was one of the first journalists to report on child molestation charges against celebrities Woody Allen and Michael Jackson. Reporting on Michael Jackson In January 1994 Vanity Fair published "Nightmare in Neverland," the first of five articles from 1994 through 2005 that investigated the charges stemming from Jackson's alleged behavior towards underage boys instigated by the 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson. She observed and wrote about two of Jackson's trials including a civil lawsuit filed against him in 2003 by concert promoter Marcel Avram, and the 2005 criminal trial on child molestation, for which Jackson was acquitted. Orth’s reporting was later associated with 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland." Reporting on Woody Allen and Mia Farrow Orth reported extensively for Vanity Fair on the child molestation charges against director Woody Allen. Orth's 10,000-word November 1992 piece, " Mia's Story" broke the news that Woody Allen was in therapy for inappropriate behavior towards his then 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan and the history of Allen's relationship with Farrow's adopted teenage daughter, Soon Yi-Previn. In 2013, Orth also broke the news that a video of Dylan confiding to Farrow about what she said happened with Allen had been obtained by New York’s Fox Channel 5 but was never aired. “Mia’s Story” is among the most-read stories in Vanity Fair's archives. In 2013, in a piece titled "Momma Mia!" Orth obtained the first on the record interview with then 28-year-old Dylan Farrow. In the story, Dylan detailed her allegations of how Allen sexually abused her in the attic of the family home, which Allen strongly denied. Dylan also discussed the impact the child molestation case had on her life and the Farrow family Orth interviewed eight of Farrow’s children for the 9,400-word story which generated significant media interest in Farrow’s son, Ronan, as possibly the biological son of Frank Sinatra. All eight of Farrow’s children interviewed for the story said they suffered psychological damage from the case and wanted nothing to do with Allen. In response to Orth’s 2013 story, and the renewed media attention on the decades-old accusations and custody fight between Allen and Farrow, Allen drafted a lengthy opinion piece published the New York Times in 2014 denying that he had abused Dylan when she was a child in the.... Discover the Maureen Orth popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Maureen Orth books.