Meghan Irons is a veteran Boston journalist who worked for the Boston Globe for two decades before joining the journalism faculty at Boston University.

Irons spent a long career covering a range of social justice issues, including how culture, local politics, education policy and traumatic issues affect people’s everyday life. Her deep and insightful coverage of the communities of Boston landed her a spot on a Boston Globe team that covered life and death in a city neighborhood.

The award-winning series, “68 Blocks: Life, Death, Hope in Boston’s Most Troubled Neighborhood.” The project, available via Kindle, explored why crime persisted in a corner of the city. Irons also served as the Boston Globe’s City Hall Bureau chief during the administration of Mayor Martin J. Walsh. She was a lead reporter and writer for the newspaper’s Valedictorians Project, which explored income inequality through the lens of the top-rated students at Boston’s public high schools.

The project was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist for local news. That achievement was followed by substantial funding from the Bar Foundation, which encouraged the Globe to continue to dig into the topic of race, class and opportunities in the public schools. As a result, the Globe created the Great Divide Team, and Irons was one of the inaugural reporters.

Irons also covered the 2020 mayor’s race, which included the most racially and culturally diverse candidates in Boston’s history. Michelle Wu, then a city councilor of Chinese-descent, became the first woman and the first person of color, to be elected. Irons was also a member of the Globe’s elite Spotlight Team, which is famously known for its coverage of the Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse of young boys by priests. She was part of a two-member Spotlight team that explored injustices in life without parole sentences in Massachusetts and the nation.

Irons now works full-time as an Associate Professor of the Practice of Impact Journalism at Boston University, where her courses include trauma-aware journalism, race and gender in the media, reporting in depth and media criticism.

Irons is also a noted moderator and panelist who has interviewed political figures, specialists and luminaries in journalism including Marty Baron, the former editor of The Washington Post and Connie Chung, of CBS News fame. She has been a regular presenter of the Power of Narrative Conference for the past decade.

Irons, who was born in Jamaica, emigrated to Boston with her mother and three siblings in the early 1980s. She is a proud graduate of the Jeremiah E. Burke High School, Emerson College and Northeastern University, where she received her master’s degree. In 2024, Irons received an honorary doctorate from Emerson College for her social justice coverage and journalism achievements.

Irons lives in the Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park with her chihuahua-pomerianian doggies, Marley and JoJo.

Meghan Irons