A Visit to WPIX11 with Queens College Alumna Mary Murphy ’81:
A special Professionals off Campus event featuring an inside look at the PIX11 newsroom and a taping of “Midday with Muller” featuring Emmy-Award‑winning journalist John Muller.

Mary Murphy, '81, graduated magna cum laude from Queens College and has spent her entire broadcasting career in her hometown working primarily for PIX11 over the last 30 years. A native of Woodside, she is known for her aggressive pursuit of the facts, along with her ability to connect with interview subjects.

Mary spent five years in the 1980s at PIX11, working her way up from production assistant to reporter. She returned to PIX11 in 1993, where she was given the opportunity to anchor, produce documentaries, and continue to break stories. During her time at PIX11, Mary has covered nearly every major story including the 9/11 terror attacks, Superstorm Sandy, and the election of Pope Francis in Vatican City, to name a few. In 2013, she also launched the “Mary Murphy Mystery” segment, which looks at unsolved crimes and missing persons cases. In 2015, one of those segments led to the reunion of a child with her biological mother after being left behind 38 years earlier.

She has also been at the forefront of coverage on the local and national opioid crisis, winning an Emmy in 2018 for a story about a young addict desperate to get into detox. The Drug Enforcement Administration has written a letter of commendation to Mary for nearly a decade of reporting on the opioid crisis, and the Suffolk County Emergency Services Division uses some of her reports in training.

For her work in television journalism, Mary has received 29 Emmy awards (27 of them at PIX11), along with an Edward R. Murrow Award for writing, and many first-place prizes from the Associated Press Broadcasters’ Association.

Mary is grateful for the opportunity that journalism has given her to see the world. And she identifies with so many people who, like her, came from ordinary backgrounds—but witnessed extraordinary things.