Mandy Marie Jenkins, 42, died Feb. 26 in Zanesville after nearly four years of cancer treatment.
Jenkins was born on August 16, 1980 in Aurora to Colonel Rudy Jenkins and Anita Clark. She grew up in Zanesville and graduated from West Muskingum High School in 1998. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Kent State, where she met her future husband, Ben Fisher.
Jenkins has spent more than two decades as a journalist and news anchor. At the Cincinnati Enquirer, Mahoning Matters and other news outlets, she has helped news organizations adapt to the digital age by developing strategies for delivering news online, finding new audiences with social media and using the Internet for reporting.
A beloved mentor and editor, Jenkins served on the Online News Association’s board of directors for eight years (including two years as board chair) and played a key role in founding the nonprofit Women’s Leadership Accelerator.
In 2016, Jenkins became chief news officer and later editor-in-chief at Storyful, a company hired by other news outlets to vet viral videos and breaking news reports. She has overseen teams in Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong and the United States. In 2018, Jenkins was selected for the John S. Knight Fellowship in Journalism at Stanford University.
Karen Workman, Jenkins’ protégé and now deputy politics editor of The New York Times, described Jenkins as “the kind of person you could listen to for hours and walk away feeling smarter and more confident about yourself.”
Workman described Jenkins as having a “clear view of the world and its people, uninfluenced by groupthink” with an “uncanny ability to captivate a room, whether it’s 30 or 300 people.”
At Kent State, Jenkins co-founded Fusion, the university’s LGBTQ magazine, which is still in circulation. Throughout her life, she was a defender of the dignity and legal rights of all sexual minorities.
Jenkins met Fisher on the staff of the Daily Kent Stater. They got married in August 2008. Jenkins is known to have joked that “I love journalists so much, I married one.” Both were champions of each other’s professional endeavors and sports teams, and enjoyed traveling, trying new beers, and hiking and biking.
A resident of New York for the past decade, Jenkins had a diverse circle of friends and enjoyed introducing friends to her favorite bars and restaurants. She worked religiously, joined frequent beach trips and pub crawls, and hosted a large annual holiday party at her Brooklyn home. She has also traveled extensively, visiting at least 35 countries and all 50 states. Her most famous trips include the Olympics in Brazil and South Korea, trekking the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, a safari in Kenya and trips to Russia, Latvia, Egypt and India to train fellow journalists.
Throughout her life, Jenkins loved to consume, analyze, and discuss popular culture. She has subscribed to Entertainment Weekly for over 20 years and is a reader of every Stephen King novel. She felt that Fleetwood Mac was always the right choice, Scully was an alcoholic, Han was first, and Magneto was right.
Jenkins’ enthusiasm for helping them in their careers has been praised by friends and colleagues, a trait inspired by her mentor Steve Buttry.
“When I jumped blindly out of a newspaper job with zero safety net, she grabbed me, offering to bring me opportunities if they arose,” said Melissa Ramali, a student at Kent State. “It was an honor to have Mandy Jenkins in my corner.”
Irish journalist Razan Ibrahim, who fled her native Syria in 2011, said she will always be grateful for Jenkins’ role in her new life as a war refugee.
“I will never forget the first time I met him. She met me and gave me a chance to live,” Ibrahim said. “You made me.”
Jenkins is survived by her husband Ben, parents Rudy Jenkins, Anita and Ray Clark, her brother Andrew Clark, several cousins, aunts and uncles, father-in-law Orpheus Fisher and her two beloved cats Franklin and Eleanor.
She was preceded in death by her grandparents, Dick and Joyce Jenkins, her maternal grandparents, Donald and Garnet Hamp, and her mother-in-law, Sue Fisher.
Throughout her long journey with cancer, dozens of friends in New York, Ohio and around the world provided invaluable practical and emotional support to Jenkins and her family.
A memorial service will be held Sunday, March 5 at 1:00 PM at Meadow Farm Church, 6015 Coopermill Road, Zanesville. The friends plan to continue celebrating life in New York in the coming months. Memorial donations may be made to the Breast Cancer Research Fund via GoFundMe, https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mandy-return-home-to-ohio. Jenkins donated her body to the Ohio State Medical College for research.
Published online February 26, 2023
Published in the Times Recorder
