Barbara Walsh, 2007
Jackie MacMullan, 2006
Ron Winslow, 2005

Visiting Journalist Program

2006 Visiting Journalist:
Jackie MacMullan

Jackie MacMullan '82, sports columnist and associate editor of the Boston Globe, spent the week of March 20, 2006, on campus as the second Donald Murray Visiting Journalist. Like her predecessor in the visiting journalist program, Ron Winslow of the Wall Street Journal, she spoke in all the journalism classes, met with students and give a talk open to the community.

Jackie started writing for the Globe right after her UNH graduation, then left the paper for a while and returned in January 2002. Read her latest Globe columns. She's also a correspondent for WHDH-TV (Channel 7) in Boston and for New England Sports Network (NESN), and she appears occasionally on the ESPN program "Around the Horn."

In her years at the Globe, Jackie has covered events including the 1986 World Series, the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals and the 1988 Olympic Games, as well as numerous Final Four tournaments and NBA championships. She collaborated with Larry Bird on his biography Bird Watching, and with Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma on Geno: In Pursuit of Perfection, which came out in January 2006. (Read about this Geno and other books by journalism alumni.)

From 1995 to 2000, Jackie was a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, covering the National Basketball Association. From 1996 to 1999, she was a regular contributor to CNN/SI, the 24-hour news network. She has won national writing awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, including first place for investigative reporting in 1993 and feature writing in 1994. She received the Tufts University Distinguished Achievement Award in 1995, was named the New England Women's Leadership Award recipient in 1997, was named the New Fund Hall of Fame media recipient in 2000, was inducted into the UNH Hall of Honor in 2001, and was honored by the Institute of Study and Sport in Society in 2003 as its Hero in Sport winner.

While at UNH, from which she graduated cum laude, Jackie played four years of basketball, leading the team in scoring as a sophomore and serving as a team captain in her senior year. She was the recipient of both the Robert Perry Student-Athlete Award and the Dean Williamson Award, given to the student who "excels in scholarship, athletics and loyalty to the University.''

She is involved in a number of charitable endeavors, among them the Huntington's Disease Society of America, for whom she served as national spokesperson in 2000, the New England Sports Museum, the New England Hemophilia Association and the Colonel Daniel Marr Boys & Girls Club. Jackie and her husband, Michael Boyle, have two children, 13 and 9.

Jackie's fan club at UNH, already huge, swelled to epic proportions during her week on campus. Despite her unvarnished presentation of the realities of the sportswriting life -- night and weekend work, missed family events, absurdly tight deadlines -- hordes of students still say they want to be Jackie when they graduate. Even those of us who aren't sports fans were wowed by her passion, dogged reporting and graceful writing.

2007 Walsh | 2006 MacMullan | 2005 Winslow