She began her journalism career at Barnard as a campus correspondent for the Daily News in New York City before graduating to The News-Times of Danbury, CT and United Press International in Boston.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary (1997), she has been the recipient of writing and public service awards from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Sigma Delta Chi, the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation and others for a reporting career that focused on social issues as infant mortality, domestic violence and juvenile crime.
A regular on local public affairs programs in Boston, she has also appeared on The Today Show, Larry King Live and Nightline.
McNamara is the author of two previous books: Breakdown: Sex, Suicide and the Harvard Psychiatrist (which was an Edgar Award finalist in 1994) and The Parting Glass: A Toast to the Traditional Pubs of Ireland (with photographer Eric Roth).
She contributed to the Boston Globe's coverage of the clergy sexual abuse scandal by recommending that the Spotlight Team look further into the cases she had reported on previously.