Mary Rose Madden

As a Baltimore-based multimedia journalist, I’ve produced in-depth radio + print news features
for NPR’s national desk, WYPR, as well as for Marketplace. I’ve reported two investigative longform stories for Reveal, out of The Center for Investigative Reporting. I’m currently finishing a project for the BBC. I also produced or co-produced a number of award-winning series at WYPR, the NPR affiliate in Baltimore, most notably "On the Watch." The series dove into inequities in policing and the courts, as well as reform efforts in the wake of Freddie Gray. An excerpt of the reporting was quoted in the DOJ's 2016 critical analysis of the Baltimore Police Department. I've broken stories and my work has brought legislative change in the Maryland statehouse, inspired listeners or readers to react and reach out, and has won numerous journalism awards. 


I produce pieces that run the gamut, but they always take readers past the front page news to inform but also to bring a problem to life through personal narrative. My stories pull apart an issue, a policy, or a statistic - and they draw the listener to a complexity, a nuanced look into another person's world. I've reported on mental healthcare and the ACA, farming, housing and homelessness in Baltimore City, sexting and shaming in middle school, and gender identity in adolescence. But I've also captured the Baltimore beauty of toilet bowl races, a budding worm-catching business, and a Little Italy film festival.  And guess what? I'm available for work! 


maryrose.madden@gmail.com

COVID-19 Outbreak At Maryland Psychiatric Hospital Highlights Employee Danger

Aired March 31, 2020 As Gov. Larry Hogan’s press conference was getting underway Monday, Miriam Doyle, a clinical social worker at Clifton T. Perkins Psychiatric Hospital in Howard County for three years, was trying to listen for the updates she says her patients were desperate for. She, her co-workers, and her patients had just learned about the outbreak in their hospital, where eight patients and a staff member had tested positive for Covid-19, and Doyle wanted to hear what the governor had to tell them.
SoundCloud •

"Rwanda's Next Steps: A Generation Living In Genocide's Aftermath" - Series in Four Parts

On a reporting fellowship to Rwanda, Madden filed pieces about the country’s freedom of the press, religion, and economic recovery eighteen years after the genocide. But also, she reported on how children born of rape during the genocide were denied government benefits. It focused on how the government was seemingly looking good on reparations, but political leaders were intentionally leaving out victims of rape and their children. The piece won a national award.

On The Watch: Baltimore Police Tightens Grip On Police Misconduct Records

Aired December 16, 2016 Out of the 327 homicide cases in the city this year, only about 67 of these investigations have been closed. The police need witnesses and information from the community in order to solve cases. But the public wants info from police department, too -- such as the number of complaints made about police misconduct. And what happens to cops who are subject to internal investigations?

Residents Take On The Poultry Industry And Ask: Is Living Near Millions of Chickens Making Us Sick?

Aired March 6, 2020 Maryland’s chicken industry, centered on the Eastern Shore, produces billions of pounds of broilers and fryers every year. It also has produced millions of pounds of chicken waste that environmentalists say have harmed the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Now, folks who live near those farms are worrying about how all those chickens are affecting their health as well. Monica Brooks, for example, thought life in the country, starting a church on the lower shore, sounded lovely.

In The Hole: The Rocky Path To Treatment

Aired June 12, 2019 It’s been 48 hours since Darryll Burrell called an intake counselor and got his childhood friend, Al Jackson, a spot in the drug treatment program Powell Recovery in Fells Point. But first, Al wants to get his prescription for suboxone - one of the three FDA approved medications that can help block the craving for heroin, filled. So, for now, Burrell can only sit and wait and worry. He's in his parked car, outside Maryland General Hospital anticpating Al's phone call.

Farming In The City: Black Farmers In Baltimore Are Growing

Aired July 3, 2020 Next to a dilapidated hundred year old house in Northeast Baltimore, there’s an old rusted tractor that’s twisted in vines, its metal warped. It looks more like a sculpture than a piece of farm equipment. And it sits on ten acres of land with trails and ponds behind it. It caught the eye of Atiya Wells three years ago while she was exploring in her neighborhood and it kicked off her vision for BLISS Meadows – a community farm, just off busy Moravia Avenue.
Close ✕