Waltham Reporter Who Challenged NHL Gender Barriers Dies

WALTHAM, MA — Robin Herman, a hockey reporter for the New York Times who was one of the first female journalists to enter a men’s professional sports locker rooming North America, died on Tuesday at the age of 70, reported the New York Times.

Herman's husband and former New York Times editor Paul Horvitz told the newspaper she died at their home in Waltham from ovarian cancer.

"As a female sportswriter, Robin was subjected to unspeakable indignities by some managers,” said Horvitz in a series of Tweets Thursday. "But she was determined to do her job for @NYTimes
readers.”

"Robin was a Swiss Army Knife reporter,” he continued. "She covered fires and AIDS, gold madness in the Diamond District and Iran hostages, homelessness and hippie communal living. That's why when the Times started the Metro Day by Day Column, they asked Robin to write it."

Herman was a hockey reporter covering the New York Islanders when she and another female reporter, Marcelle St. Cyr, were allowed to interview players in the locker room following the 1975 All-Star Game in Montreal. This came after they were routinely denied the same locker room access as male reporters and resulted in chaos, according to an article Herman wrote in the New York Times shortly after.

“Marcelle and I, not the All-Star Game, had become the news of the hour,” she wrote. “Cameras hovered over our shoulders. Microphones poked at our mouths. The tasks of establishing a serious, professional rapport with a player in a dressing room is difficult enough, but it was made virtually impossible by the circus scene.”

Herman, who was also part of the first Princeton University class of female undergraduates, wrote many other assignments for the New York Times, as well as The International Herald Tribune and The Washington Post.

Herman went on to other assignments at the Times, later wrote for The International Herald Tribune and worked at The Washington Post in its health section. She also wrote the book “Fusion: The Search for Endless Energy.”

Following her career as a reporter, Herman joined Harvard University's School of Public Health as assistant dean for communications in 1999 and retired in 2012.

Along with her husband, Herman leaves her son, Zachary, and her daughter, Eva, as well as a sister and two grandchildren, according to an obituary in The Boston Globe. She will be buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and a gathering of remembrance will be held at a later date.