ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces research about women involved in documentary newsfilm production. Production practices specific to newsfilm directly influenced the career paths of Judy Bird Williams, Lois Farfel Stark, Rhonda Schwartz, Margaret “Peggy” Rhoades, Naomi Spinrad, Paula Banks Mashore, and others who worked in long-form documentary journalism in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s at the NBC News Washington Bureau. Their unit formed in 1961 to produce the documentary magazine program David Brinkley’s Journal. Updating the division of labor that characterized newsfilm crews in World War II, women played essential roles in the NBC-Washington unit as researchers and field scouts before film crews arrived at a story’s locale. By drawing on oral histories as well as archival materials and published documents, Mascaro shows how these women approached their roles as members of the documentary unit and negotiated the sociopolitical contexts of the era, including gender politics. Judy Bird Williams, for instance, worked for six years to challenge the status quo and assert her independence as a producer. She conducted detailed advance research in Indonesia during the Vietnam War, where she produced extensive shooting scripts—a key component in newsfilm production—about uprisings against communists in the mid-1960s. In the 1980s, Paula Banks Mashore was among a group of women who challenged NBC for parity in credits and pay. The untold story of these NBC newswomen spans three decades and demonstrates the challenges and importance of breaking the industry’s glass ceiling.
