TV Trailblazer Jacobson Stepping Down
Boston anchorwoman credited with resisting trend to sensationalize local news.
July 14, 2007 — -- When Natalie Jacobson wanted to be a TV reporter in 1972, she wasn't what television bosses in Boston wanted: She was a woman.
In the 1970s, women in the business comprised just 12 percent of local newsrooms. The women who were employed were almost entirely behind the scenes.
Jacobson continued to push for an audition and finally got the chance.
"We went through a three-day process of intense questioning, testing my ability to write, see if I have a brain," Jacobson said of her three-day audition. "[They asked] do I know anything about what's going on in the world? And then [I] got the job."
Jacobson spent two years as the only female reporter in the newsroom. Then, the same bosses who were initially wary of hiring a female reporter asked her to be one of their anchors. In 1976, Jacobson became Boston's first woman to anchor an evening broadcast.
Jacobson would marry her co-anchor Chet Curtis, and the two became known simply as Chet and Nat to their viewers. Boston's own royal couple teamed up for coverage of Queen Elizabeth's 1976 visit to Boston. For nearly two decades, the two navigated the tragedies and the triumphs for viewers who tuned into their top-rated broadcasts.
Though she delivered the headlines, Jacobson often made them too.
At 37, Jacobson got pregnant. Considered old by some, one paper dubbed hers "the geriatric pregnancy."
When her daughter Lindsay was born, it was the lead story on the evening news. Jacobson remembers asking at the time, "Isn't there anything else going on in the world?"
Jacobson recounted a fond memory of a fan who sent a doll and note during her pregnancy.
"[It] said if your mom was still alive she would say all of these things," Jacobson said. "And I just bawled. I never again saw people en masse. I saw them as individuals."
Jacobson's viewers became so attached that they had a particularly strong reaction to an interview she conducted with one-time gubernatorial candidate John Silber. Jacobson asked Silber about his strengths and weaknesses.
Popular Reads
ABC News Live