Pioneering Television Journalist Marlene Sanders Dies at Age 84

Emmy-winning television journalist Marlene Sanders died Tuesday at age 84. The cause of death was cancer.

Her son, The New Yorker staff writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, announced the news on Facebook. “She informed and inspired a generation,” he wrote. “Above all, though, she was a great Mom.”

Sanders was the first female journalist to anchor a primetime newscast in 1966 when she filled in for ABC’s Ron Cochran, and she was also the first female journalist to report from Vietnam for network TV in 1966. A decade later, she became the first female vice-president of a news division.

She began working for CBS as a documentary correspondent and producer in 1978 and remained there nearly decade and won three Emmys. She taught journalism at New York University as an adjunct professor after her broadcast career.

[USA Today]