October 7, 2015
From the age of 10, when she was given her first typewriter, Linda Deutsch knew she wanted to be a reporter. Envisioning herself as an entertainment reporter, her career took a drastic turn when she was assigned her first big criminal case in 1970—the Charles Manson trial. Since then, she has covered many headline-grabbing cases including Patty Hearst, John DeLorean, William Kennedy Smith, the police officers who beat Rodney King, O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Michael Jackson.
“I felt I was serving the only purpose I could, which was to be the eyes and ears of America in courtrooms. And if I had become an attorney, even if I had just gone to law school, I would be thinking differently. Lawyers think differently than reporters or readers. And I wanted to be on the same level as the readers so I would be answering their questions with my stories,” Deutsch said at a Sept. 28 event organized by the CSUN student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
She worked at The Associated Press for 48 years –“longer than a lot of marriages last,” Deutsch said–before she retired in December.
When she was 12, she created an Elvis Presley fan club and produced a newsletter that was distributed to 300 readers worldwide. Then she experienced a “life-altering” moment in her sophomore year of college when she interned for the Perth Amboy (New Jersey) Evening News in the summer of 1963.
The March on Washington was planned for late August but her editor didn’t have the money to send her, so Deutsch arranged to ride on an NACCP-sponsored bus. She witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous “I Have a Dream” speech that resulted in her first front-page byline.
“After that, there was no turning back,” Deutsch said.
Fresh out of college and looking for a news job, Deutsch headed to California, where he uncle lived, and found what she described as “Nirvana” and “the most beautiful place” she’d ever seen.
Deutsch applied to the L.A. Times, the L.A. Herald-Examiner and the AP. (She had freelanced for the wire service in New Jersey.) Impressed by her work, the AP Los Angeles Bureau immediately plunked her into a newsroom of cigar-smoking male reporters.
“We could not work at night. It was forbidden because they thought it was dangerous for women. At that time, there was a contract that was very male-centric. We were known as newsmen, not women, and women were required to retire when they were 55,” Deutsch said.
Times changed and Deutsch was able to work well past her mid-50s.
During the Jackson trial in 2005, fans applauded her for her objective reporting.
“They called me over and said, ‘We just want you to know, when we say the press are liars, we don’t mean you. We read you every day on the Internet and we know that you are unbiased,’ ” Deutsch said. “I took that as a badge of honor. I was really pleased with that.”
Deutsch often reported under a great deal of stress. During the Patty Hearst trial in 1976, her editor told her over the phone, “I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but every paper in the country is holding their front page for this,” Deutsch recounted.
Her elevated status within the journalism community compelled CSUN journalism students to pay extra attention to her advice.
“Decide what it is you are interested in, what your passion is. And if you feel that you cannot do anything else but be a journalist, that there’s nothing else in the world that interests you, then you have to do it. If there are other things you can say you are into, I’d say, look into them. The journalism field is crowded and it’s diminishing and the talk of doom for newspapers is not overstated. It can’t be overstated,” said Deutsch.
Preparation is key when applying for that first job.
“You have to prove yourself and I’d say get as much experience as you possibly can. And report and report and report,” advised Deutsch.
Although Deutsch didn’t set out to be a courtroom reporter, she is beyond satisfied.
“I really can’t think of anything else I would have wanted to do,” Deutsch said.
By Trine Bay Larsen, Graduate Student