Avenger of the Week | Maxine Cheshire, American Newspaper Reporter

Maxine Cheshire, small town police reporter who took a job at The Washington Post in the 50s when women were rare in newsrooms and became a legendary reporter and columnist, died on December 31 at 90 years old. She wanted to report on crime, but she accepted the Post’s offer to cover the society scene in 1954 and then approached her beat as if she were a crime reporter. A witty and aggressive journalist, she was both loved and feared in the nation’s capital.

Cheshire broke government scandals ranging from influence peddling among South Korean operatives to the Nixon family’s efforts to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewels given to them by the Shah of Iran. She wrote about expensive but fake antiques in Jackie Kennedy’s redecoration of the White House and asked Frank Sinatra if his ties to organized crime would be a problem for his friend Vice President Spiro Agnew. Old Blue Eyes famously called her “nothing but a two-dollar ****” and stuffed two dollar bills into her wine glass, which she kept as a souvenir.

Her investigations often started with tidbits picked up at various social events, and she would dig deep to get her story. Former Post managing editor Eugene Patterson described her as having the “guts of a cat burglar”, and she won several investigative journalism awards and was nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes.

“Some women are interested in needlepoint,” said Cheshire, who wrote for the Post for 28 years. “I’m interested in organized crime.”

Born in 1930 in Harlan, Kentucky, a mining town, she asked the editor of the local paper if she could be a reporter when she was 5. When she graduated from college 16 years later, Cheshire became a reporter at that same newspaper, the Harlan Daily Enterprise, and worked at two other regional papers before joining the Post in 1954. She was married twice, had four children and insisted on a flexible work schedule throughout her career.

For helping to break barriers to women as investigative journalists while shaking up our nation’s Capital, Maxine Cheshire is our Avenger of the Week.

For breaking barriers to women as investigative journalists while shaking up our nation’s Capital, Maxine Cheshire is the @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek. Frank Sinatra was definitely not a fan 😆 #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-maxine-cheshire