This was the first newsroom where I worked as a TV reporter, KXTV Sacramento. There was one woman on the reporting staff, a former Miss Texas. But she worked strictly on the Noon News Show which targeted housewives. This photo was probably taken in the afternoon, after she had gone home. Clearly, what’s missing in that newsroom photo from 1970 are women. There was only a handful of women reporters and anchors in the 1970s and 80s. Most were relegated to “women’s stories,” fashion, cooking, raising children.
The good news is everything has now been turned upside down. Once given the opportunity, many women have proved to be excellent television news reporters. Many have won Emmys. In fact, women now represent more than 53 percent of TV news reporters according to the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Still, only about 26 percent of TV News Directors are women.
Our newsroom in Sacramento was a small news operation, fewer reporters than the competition. We tried to find unique stories that would interest the audience. I once spent a week living and reporting on a hippie commune in Mendocino County on the rugged North Coast of California. They lived in nature and often paraded around naked. There were a lot of psychedelic drugs.
A couple of weeks after airing the series, a bunch of the hippies visited me at my house in Sacramento. They camped out for a week in my back yard, building a fire to cook food. My wife was concerned, but she welcomed them. It was a 1970s kind of thing, everyone was welcome.
One of our reporters quit to become a priest. He once covered a murder story and closed the report by saying, “May the Lord have mercy on the victims’ souls, and the Lord will no doubt forgive the suspect.”
Still, there was a labor dispute at the station. We were paid about 25 percent less than reporters at the NBC and ABC stations. We signed pledge cards and voted to bring in a unit of AFTRA, the broadcaster’s union. I started the effort and led our side in negotiations. We received a healthy salary increase.
However, some months later, my boss took me out to lunch and told me they didn’t want me at the station any longer.
I was fired.
Several years later, I was told by a former colleague that the station convinced the reporters to de-certify the union in exchange for salary increases. They got rid of the union, and not long afterward I was told that many of them were fired.
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You’re the guy in the black t-shirt, right? Always the snappy dresser! (Or maybe that’s not you… )
I got my first job in 1972, up in Portland at KGW. I was hired as the first female floor director, but I was banned from the crew’s lounge because they had Playboy centerfolds glued up on all the walls. I went home after my first day of work, bought a Playgirl magazine, pulled out the 3-page naked man centerfold and stuck it on the wall in the crew lounge the next day. “Anybody have a problem with that, or me?” I asked. Nobody did! After that, those crew guys did everything they could to help me, and boy I needed help the first many times I sat in the director’s chair. I would call the wrong camera, and the TD would take the correct one. I would be ready to ask a cameraman to move, and see that he already did! I loved those guys, and I think they thought I was ok, too, for a girl.
One other funny thing: When I sat down at the Vidifont machine to type in the day’s entries and then sit through one of the boring public-service shows… I would rummage around in the desk drawers for the porn that the other (male, obviously) floor directors had hidden. I learned quite a bit! We didn’t have “HR” departments; we just had fun and got revenge when necessary.
Kirste…..Interesting comment. I never realized that you started as a tech person. Always thought of you as an anchor/ reporter.