When Molly Sinclair McCartney got her first newspaper job, routing calls for the local Baytown Sun outside Houston, there were few opportunities for women in journalism, let alone for a high school junior barely old enough to drive.
Yet Ms. McCartney — the intrepid, horse-riding daughter of an Exxon refinery worker — went on to build a decades-long career as a reporter, making her way far beyond the old-fashioned “women’s pages” where she got her start. Beginning in the early 1960s, she chronicled the rise of second-wave feminism, investigated corporate fraud and malfeasance and wrote about older adults and aging, including during a nearly 15-year stint at The Washington Post.
