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CNN Anchor Recalls Tough Rise: Women Overdue at Big Networks, but Industry's Improving, She Says

Posted on: Monday, 13 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Mark Washburn, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Mar. 13--Here's how the glamorous world of television started for journalist Judy Woodruff: She graduated from Duke and landed a job as a secretary at an Atlanta station.

First big break was getting to do the weather on the weekends. She remained a newsroom secretary during the week.

Woodruff, 59, who speaks tonight in Charlotte on her life and career, was part of the initial wave of women who took roles in TV news in the late 1960s. Until then it had been a male-dominated profession.

"There were no role models for me," she said in a telephone interview.

But she persevered and her career took her to NBC where she covered the White House, later becoming a CNN anchor and Washington correspondent for the PBS's "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour."

Woodruff says it's not surprising that a woman has yet to become sole anchor for one of the major networks because there is so little turnover in those positions. But with Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer reportedly under consideration for the anchor slots at CBS and ABC, Woodruff said the day is coming.

"I think it's long overdue. Women have been anchoring for many years on cable news. And women are more than 50 percent of the local anchors on stations around the country."

Woodruff speaks at 7:30 p.m. today at McColl Theatre at ImaginOn on "Political Tales and Personal Triumphs," presented by the Levine Museum of the New South and Charlotte Woman of the Year.

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WANT TO GO?

Tickets for Judy Woodruff's speech are $10 to the public; $5 for Levine Museum members. They are available through Children's Theatre Box Office at (704) 973-2828.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

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