Paving the way

Cokie Roberts persevered in male-dominated field

Younger radio listeners and television audiences may never have noticed Cokie Roberts or found anything unusual about a woman covering politics or analyzing it.

And that’s because Ms. Roberts herself paved the way for women in broadcast news, and she opened doors for other women to join her.

Ms. Roberts, 75, died Tuesday from complications related to breast cancer. She had become a fixture in news, one of the most recognizable faces and voices explaining politics in America.

Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs became known as Cokie as a child when her brother couldn’t pronounce her given name.

Their father, Thomas Hale Boggs Sr., served in Congress for more than 30 years and was the Democratic majority leader when he died in a plane crash in 1972. His wife, Lindy Claiborne Boggs, replaced him in Congress and later served as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Cokie Roberts grew up surrounded by politicians and their staffs, as well as their families. It was perfect training for a woman whose 40-year career would require understanding of how Washington’s power brokers thought and operated.

Ms. Roberts might have seemed destined for a life in public office herself, but journalism called to her. After attending Wellesley College in Massachusetts, she took a job hosting a public affairs program on television.

When she joined National Public Radio in 1977, it was a low-profile news organization with much to prove. Ms. Roberts’ pioneering work covering Congress and other beats contributed to establishing public radio as a major national news organization.

In 1988, she took a job as the political correspondent for ABC-TV, still contributing analysis at NPR occasionally. On television, viewers saw her reports as part of the nightly network news, watched her fill in for Ted Koppel on “Nightline,” and witnessed her sparring with often all-male panels on the Sunday news talk show, “This Week.”

If anyone had doubts about a woman’s capacity to hold her own in the rough and tumble, male-dominated world of D.C. political journalism, the doubts didn’t linger after watching Cokie Roberts.

A generation later, audiences and listeners have a slew of female faces and voices bringing them the types of news and analysis that Ms. Roberts pioneered.

It is hard to remember the time before she led the way, and even more difficult to imagine a future without her on the radio or on television.