Taylor Rudow - Yes She Did!: News & Media

Imagine being a reporter during MartinLuther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Or interviewing the firstwoman in America to vote. Or reporting from Vietnam with the war raging allaround you. Marlene Sanders did all of this and more and she wasone of the first women to do it.

Women have been a part of the journalismworld since the 1800s.

However, for many years they were keptfrom working as professional journalists because of their gender. While afew women, such as Marlene Sanders, found their way to a professional c areer, the majority of women worked as secretaries andresearch assistants. The women who were hired as journalists weren't allowed towrite. They would do the research for a story, then give it to their malecounterparts to write. In the early days of jou rnalism,these women were jokingly called "dollies" by their bosses. They wereviewed as the pretty faces at the workplace, not as actual contributing membersof the team. They were told that there would never be a real place for them inthe world of media .

However, when the women's movementgained power in the 1960s, so did the dollies. The women working for Newsweek were the firstto take a stand. With the help of one of the only female lawyers in practice, the 46women employees of Newsweek were the firs t group of mediaprofessionals to sue their company for unfair treatment based on gender. Whenthe Newsweek women took their story to the public on March 16, 1970, itquickly gained national attention and support. Only two days after their storywent publi c, the ladies who worked at Ladies' Home Journal staged their own sit-in, and other groups quickly followed.Women in journalism refused to work until they were treated equally. Thanks tothe work of the dollies, women were able to move up in the world of journalism. The few women who were already working asjournalists, such as Marlene Sanders, were now able to move even higher, pavingthe way for others.

Marlene Sanders knew from an early agethat she wanted to be in front of cameras. So, after a year of college, Sanders moved to New York to pursue a career inacting.

However, the theater was harder to breakinto than she anticipated. It wasn't working out as planned; so, in 1955 whenMik e Wallace offered her a job at WNEW-TV, Sanderstook it. As it turned out, it was the perfect fit.

At WNEW-TV, Sanders worked in a smallunit, and was therefore expected to carry her weight. Unlike the dollies whowere stuck pouring coffee, Sanders was lea rning howto dig for facts, edit, write, and produce. Sanders was a hard worker, andquickly moved up the WNEW-TV ranks. Mike Wallace saw her potential, and refusedto let her gender keep her from being an asset to the company.

By 1962, Sanders was the assistantdirector of news by far the highest position reached by any woman in thefield. But Sanders pushed even higher.

In 1964, Sanders went to work as a NewYork correspondent for ABC Ne ws. At ABC, she got herbiggest breakshe became the first woman to anchor a nightlynewscast for a major network. Sanders paved the way for women in journalism byproving that gender didn't matter. However, she wasn't alone in her fight. Manywomen, such as Jeannie Morris, were fighting to maketheir voices heard in the world of black and white.