NYT reporter who broke gender barriers in NHL locker room dies – NBC10 Philadelphia

Robin Herman, a gender-breaking reporter for The New York Times and the first female journalist to interview players in the locker room after an NHL game, has died. She was 70.

Her husband, Paul Horvitz, told the newspaper that Herman died Tuesday at their home in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts, of ovarian cancer.

“Robin is a reporter for the Swiss Army Knife. She covered the fires and AIDS, the gold rush in Diamond County and the hostages in Iran, homelessness and the shared life of hippies,” the former Times editor recalled in a series tweets on Thursday as condolences and tributes were posted on social media.

Herman was a hockey reporter covering the New York Islanders when she and another female reporter were allowed to interview players in the locker room – as their male counterparts are normally allowed to do – after the 1975 All-Star game in Montreal.

Herman, in an article for the Times a few weeks later, recalled how she hoped her “mini-sports history” moment would go unnoticed. Instead, the dressing room quickly turned into a “circus scene” as “players scrambled for towels and photographers scrambled for cameras” and the two female reporters suddenly became “the news of the hour.” , she wrote.

“It was a pivotal moment, as it loudly foreshadowed the fact that female sports writers are a reality and they must be dealt with,” Herman wrote.

Herman went on to do other jobs at the Times, then wrote for The International Herald Tribune and worked at The Washington Post on its health side. She also wrote the 1990 book Fusion: In Search of Endless Energy.

Herman became the assistant dean of communications at Harvard University’s School of Public Health in 1999 and retired in 2012.

“Robin has helped pave the way for so many women in sports by breaking down many gender barriers allowing us to follow in her footsteps,” the Association for Women in Sports Media tweeted.

Born in 1951 in New York City, Herman achieved her firsts: Herman was also a student in the first Princeton University class to accept women.

In addition to her husband, she left behind two grown children and other relatives. The Boston Globe reports Herman will be laid to rest in a cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a memorial service will follow.