Newswoman Becomes Newsmaker

It was the best kind of a party, where everyone knows everyone else and, even more important, all are friends who laugh at the same jokes and share memories of political battles and victories.

The party was at television journalist Ruth Ashton Taylor’s house. She had collected the best and the rarest of political animals.

Pat Brown was there, as were a clutch of county supervisors and councilmen, reporters, writers, performers, spin doctors, press secretaries--the people around town whom you would collect for a great party if you had access to the best Rolodexes in town.

Early in the evening, the mountainous echo of a bass drum could be heard in the distance. Everyone quieted and looked at the corner of the house. Marching in a double column, the entire company of the Encino High School band, resplendent in red and gold uniforms, arrived.

It was one of those high-water-mark parties, the kind about which you say years later: “Remember that time at Ruthie’s? That was a party.”

And it was. It was the reflection of the vitality and originality that is the lady’s trademark.

Taylor had been awarded her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Dec. 13 for her rich contributions to the news world. She was surrounded by family, friends and others delighted to see her receive almost the only recognition she didn’t already have.

Taylor went to undergraduate school at Scripps College for Women, one of the Claremont cluster of colleges. From Claremont, she went to the Columbia School of Journalism, where she was hired by CBS before she graduated. She was assigned to writing for Bob Trout, one of her idols.

“I had a marvelous time in New York, and I found out how exciting the news business is,” Taylor says.

In 1948, Taylor and Douglas Edwards covered the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia. In the heat of the summer before air conditioning, Ruth was the ministering angel to a number of sweating newsmen.

She carried a knitting bag with her wherever she went, and when the gentlemen of the press saw her coming, they greeted her warmly. At their suggestion and arrangement, her knitting bag always held a bottle of Scotch to numb the political palaver of the speakers of both parties. Taylor did not join in the conviviality dispensed by her knitting bag, but she was greatly appreciated.

She returned to Los Angeles in 1951 as the city’s first woman broadcast journalist. “The executives were so overcome with the competing wrestling shows, they decided to do something even crazier. They put a woman on the air.” She also had been the only woman in Edward R. Murrow’s original documentary unit.

Taylor did several stints with KNX Radio, but her career mainly has been spent working at KCBS. Think of the times you have seen Taylor at political functions or fires in Malibu, when the hills were ablaze except where she stood. If it was news, it was Taylor, and you saw it every evening. And if the mud was ankle-deep, Taylor was in it. She said they used to call her the “housemudder.”

She has a cabinet full of awards. She was one of seven Legends of News honored at the Los Angeles Press Club’s dinner in 1987. In 1982, the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences presented her with the Governor’s Award for lifetime achievement. In 1981, she was chosen Journalist of the Year by Sigma Delta Chi and won the Diamond Achievement Award from Women in Communications. She has several Emmys and a Golden Mike.

She is host of the “Newsmakers” program and has served as general assignment reporter, political editor, arts reporter, commentator and feature reporter. She is married to cameraman Jack Taylor and has three children.

A few months ago, Taylor moved to Lincoln, a small town outside Sacramento where she looks out on mountains, trees and streams. She told me she’ll be covering the new state administration, starting with the inauguration.

I plan to go see her soon but not until the mud season is over. No rain is predicted for the inauguration, but with Taylor at the microphone, best take your raincoat.