Jordan was given her first job in the newspaper business by Irish author and editor
Tim Pat Coogan, who hired her to write a column in
The Irish Press. As a national correspondent for the Post, Jordan has written about U.S. politics and society and has appeared as an analyst on ABC, and BBC. Jordan was the founding editor and moderator for
Washington Post Live, which hosted forums including "The 40th Anniversary of
Watergate" in June 2012 that featured key Watergate figures including former
White House Counsel John Dean,
The Washington Post editor
Ben Bradlee, and reporters
Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein. Jordan has interviewed newsmakers including singer and songwriter
Paul McCartney, Colombian novelist
Gabriel García Márquez, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, and
Benjamín Arellano Félix, one of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins. She has written about injustices and discrimination against women including the exceedingly low conviction rate of rape in Britain and the many girls in India denied schooling solely because they were not born male. Jordan and Sullivan authored ''The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail'' (The Penguin Press, 2005). In 2006, the book won the
Christopher Award, which "salutes media that affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Together with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus,
two of the women kidnapped and held for nearly a decade by Ariel Castro in Cleveland, Jordan and Sullivan wrote the bestselling book
Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (Viking, 2015). Jordan was part of the team that reported
Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power, a biography of
Donald Trump published by Scribner in 2016. Jordan was a contributing writer to
Nine Irish Lives: The Thinkers, Fighters and Artists Who Helped Build America, edited by Mark Bailey and published by Algonquin Books in 2018. Jordan and Sullivan are the authors of
Trump on Trial: The Investigation, Impeachment, Acquittal and Aftermath (Scribner, 2020). The book, with reporting contributions from
Washington Post colleagues, received a "starred" review by
Kirkus, which said it "sets a standard for political storytelling with impeccable research and lively writing." The paperback was updated to include the
second Trump impeachment and was published in 2021 as ''Trump's Trials''. ==Awards and recognition ==