Linda Eardley – 2011
Linda Eardley showed up for her first day of work at the Post-Dispatch in 1969 to see row after row of white men, typing, smoking and yelling. She would soon learn that she was the first woman reporter hired onto the city desk. After a few months of working general assignment, Eardley was assigned to work with other female writers for the now-defunct Women’s Page and Sunday Society Page. In 1972, she returned to the increasingly diverse city desk where she worked for the next 24 years as a general assignment and Illinois reporter, education reporter, assistant Illinois editor and fill-in for a variety of day and night editors. Among her most memorable stories, she listed those on excessive spending by the St. Louis Schools superintendent; the murder-for-hire of the highly insured inventor Victor Null; the St. Louis schools desegregation case; and being a part of the on-going coverage of major stories such as the flood of 1993. She retired from the Post-Dispatch in 2005.