Safer than in person

“I learned how to cover race riots by telephone. They didn't pay me enough at my first newspaper job to venture onto the grounds of South Boston High School when bricks were being thrown. Instead, I would telephone the headmaster and ask him to relay to me the number of broken chairs in the cafeteria each day.’’

— Gwen Ifill (1955-2016), best known for her work as a PBS journalist, on her reporting of the Boston school-desegregation crisis for the old Boston Herald American in the late ‘70s. She graduated from Springfield Central High School and Simmons College, in Boston.