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Maria Panaritis

Photo Tour 2019

Maria Panaritis

Maria Panaritis Inquirer Columnist

Maria Panaritis is a news columnist with The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the more high-profile jobs at the longtime broadsheet news organization in the city. She has worked for more than two decades as a journalist in the Mid-Atlantic and in various roles.

In her two decades at The Inquirer, Maria has worked as an investigative reporter, a regional and city news reporter, an immigration beat specialist, and – during and after the Great Recession – a business news writer for a number of years.

She has won local and national awards for her reporting, writing and investigative work, most recently for a 2017 investigation about a generation of altar boys whose lives were forever damaged by a single, sexually abusive Roman Catholic priest in Northeast Philadelphia. Most recently, the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association honored her with a 2018 Distinguished Writing award, and the Religion News Association named her a national winner of its “Gerald A. Renner Award for Excellence in Enterprise Religion Reporting” in 2018.

Prior to joining The Inquirer, Maria worked for The Associated Press in Trenton, New Jersey, and in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of St. Joseph’s University. Her late father, Christos Panaritis, was orphaned during the German occupation of Greece in World War II. He and her mother, Panagiota Panaritis, immigrated to the United States after the war.

Maria was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, where her parents ran a small sandwich shop until both died, in the 1990s. Maria is married and has two sons.