Arianna Nevarez
Staff Writer
Two of the most recognized TV journalists will open up Week One’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “Icons and Instigators: Women Who Change the World, ” at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. Norah O’Donnell and Deborah Roberts will discuss their careers, new books, women of the past and the relationships they have in the present.
O’Donnell is an award-winning “60 Minutes” contributing correspondent and CBS News’ senior correspondent. She’s also recently become a New York Times bestselling author with the release of her book, We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America.
O’Donnell decided to write her book after realizing she hadn’t learned much about women in history. She said in an interview with CBS that as she was researching for the book, she was blown away by her discoveries. In the same interview, she said women were creating businesses and lives for themselves long before they had things like the right to vote.
“This is why we have to study history. I mean, I’m 52 years old. It was just about 50 years ago that women could open up a credit card in their own name, could get a mortgage, to have financial freedom,” O’Donnell said in the CBS interview. “Women couldn’t serve on juries in all 50 states until the early 1970s. Hello?”
Roberts is the co-anchor for ABC’s “20/20,” host of the weekly podcast “20/20: The After Show” and celebrating her 30th year at ABC. She is also a New York Times best-selling author of her books Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed My Life and Sisters Loved and Treasured: Stories of Unbreakable Bonds.
In Roberts’ latter book, she includes personal stories from her own sisters, everyday people about sisterhood and celebrities like Viola Davis. She interviewed women with varying kinds of sibling relationships, ranging from those who were estranged from their sisters to some who have been close since their youth. Roberts thought the most interesting thing was that all these sisters still had a bond and talked about meeting back up as “a reunion of our childhood souls,” according to an interview with Sherri Shepherd.
“But what I thought was interesting: At the end of the day, they cherish (their sisters),” Roberts said in an interview with Good Morning America. “Who else grew up with you? … Who else can you really trust?”
O’Donnell and Roberts have both been in the journalism industry for decades and have seen years of changes for women in media and in the world. In an interview before her commencement speech at University of Georgia, Roberts said the biggest challenge for her is the competitive nature of her career and the barriers she had to blow past as a woman. In the CBS interview, O’Donnell also addressed challenges she’d faced in her profession and was optimistic about women of the future.
“I think certainly in my generation there was a lot of, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but …’ or, ‘I hope I’m not offending anyone, but maybe we should …’ I think that’s starting to end,” O’Donnell said in the interview. “Younger women that I work with don’t do that. Younger women don’t apologize or wait for the men to finish speaking in a room. They just speak. They just say what needs to be done, and they do it efficiently, clearly, authoritatively, collaboratively and then their record stands on its own. That is a sign of progress.”
