That brings it up to date, and I really like this idea because lots of the time memoirs are just “Oh, I did this!” No, no, I wanted to have the book relate to things that we’re experiencing today, that those people set in place. Martin Luther King Jr., the first Astronauts, movie stars, Nobel Prize winners, world leaders, etc.? There’s a whole chapter on each one of those interviews in my upcoming book, my memoir… What I’ve decided to do is to take each chapter and see how it relates to today, see how there was a direct change in our culture from each story that I did. ![]() Later, after I retired, I realized that I had helped make it easier for other women to do this.Ĭan you tell me about your experience conducting television interviews with such esteemed individuals, from President Kennedy and his family to Dr. I didn’t think of myself as being that different from the men, because I wasn’t a female, I was a reporter. I was surprised when later people would get so excited about it. My whole focus was to just be as good as the men, and luckily I had parents who trained me that I could be just as smart as they were, and that I could do any story that they did. Joanne Desmond promos for WBZ-TV | Credit: CourtesyĪt the time, were you aware that the work you were doing in journalism would later come to have you regarded as a pioneering news anchor in Boston? No, I should have, but I wasn’t aware. MIT and Harvard would send in press releases and they would get thrown in the wastebasket, because none of the men could read them! The men at WBZ were a little afraid of me because they thought I’d take all the stories on politics, and I said, “Look, I’m trained in science and I would love to do the science stories.” Nobody was covering them in those days, so I really became the first female science reporter. They didn’t give these stories to the men who had been there for 30 years… ![]() ![]() But, whatever it took to get the job! (laughs)īut they gave me the good stories, I mean, big ones - like interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. I had to be the only woman doing this because the general managers didn’t want to have people lined up around the block protesting that there were no women on our show. So, I inquired about it, and the bottom line is I got the job interview. So you heard about the job opening through word of mouth? Yes, it was through word of mouth. Why don’t you go see them?” And I thought, “Gosh, I would not have known that!” This was not the sort of thing you would see in the newspaper. One lady said to me, “I think I heard recently that Betty Adams (who was doing the morning show at WBZ-TV) is leaving to get married. Desmond: Totally, well I was the only woman! I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I had the feeling that I was at a point in history where I could kind of choose my own way, and maybe do things that even my mother and grandmother had not thought of. I’m sure that in the 60s, breaking into the news industry had its own set of challenges with the field being male-dominated. I had the opportunity to speak with Desmond in her Santa Barbara home, discussing everything from her groundbreaking career, hauntingly intimate details surrounding the Boston Strangler case and the soon-to-be released film, and her upcoming memoir - all to show the profound influence and outreach that Desmond’s work from the 60s still holds in the modern day.īefore we get into the upcoming movie and the case, I would love to hear about you, and how you started your inspiring career in journalism. On March 17, Hulu will release a new film, Boston Strangler, not only highlighting the powerful female reporters who helped crack the case, but also showcasing footage of Desmond’s original television report within the film. Joanne Desmond in the 1960s | Credit: Courtesy
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