Williams worked as a dancer and as an actress prior to finishing her academic career.[5]
Career in Journalism
Early in her career, Williams worked as the Library Director at the Poughkeepsie Journal.
In 1990, Williams joined the Washington Post.[5] While there, she was one of the contributors to the "Networkings" column.[6]
In 2004, Williams joined The New York Times.[7] While there, she spearheaded the paper's publication of a searchable database of 16,000 pages of documents produced by the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[1][2] The Times introduced its "Guantanamo Dockets" on November 3, 2008. The dockets are based on the personal notes Williams had started to compile as she read all 16,000 pages concerning the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
In 2010, Williams left The New York Times and joined National Public Radio as a correspondent.[8]
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Umansky, Eric (January 15, 2009). "Gitmo Database Details 779 Prisoners' Cases". Propublica. Archived from the original on January 22, 2009. Retrieved April 11, 2022. We found the project so interesting that we decided to ring Margot Williams, the Times' database research editor, who has spearheaded the effort. Margot has been involved in breaking Gitmo stories for years. In fact, she's such a junkie, she said she put a recording of KSM's confession [8] on her cellphone.
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Margot Williams (1999-11-17). "GREAT SCOUTS: CyberGuides for Subject Searching on the Web". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2010-01-17. Retrieved 2010-06-07. Williams came to the Post in October 1990 from the Poughkeepsie Journal where she was the Library Director. She attended the famous High School of Performing Arts of "Fame" fame and worked as a dancer and actress before graduating from CCNY and Pratt Institute Graduate School. Williams holds a BA in Asian Studies and MS in Library and Information Science.
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Margot Williams (2010-05-22). "News pundit evangelizes for friends at Google". Inside Google. Archived from the original on 2011-11-20. Retrieved 2011-10-29. She was lead researcher on two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at The Washington Post for reporting on terrorism in 2002 and for an investigation of the use of deadly force by the District of Columbia police in 1999. Margot is the co-author of "Great Scouts! CyberGuides for Subject Searching on the Web" (Cyberage Books, 1999) and contributed to the "Networkings" column in The Washington Post for five years.
^"Pulitzer Prize-winning research editor to speak at WVU J-School Tuesday". Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism. 2007-09-17. Archived from the original on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2011-10-29. Williams is a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and the Special Libraries Association (SLA) News Division. She is a frequent speaker and trainer for her own newsroom colleagues and the IRE, SLA, Poynter Institute, Knight Program at Ohio State University, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, American Press Institute, Freedom Forum and numerous other conferences and seminars.
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Michael Calderone (2011-04-25). "WikiLeaks' Guantanamo Bay Documents: The Backstory On News Outlets' Race To Publish Them". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 2011-10-27. Retrieved 2011-10-29. A few weeks ago, the Times informed NPR investigative unit head Susanne Reber and reporter Margot Williams -- who joined NPR last year after having previously maintained the Times' Guantanamo Bay database -- to give them the news: the paper had obtained the GITMO files.