The Press: City Editor

One of the city-desk telephones jangled. The woman on the desk answered, and what she heard made her face crease in annoyance. "Look," she said, "I'm sick and tired of the 'Don't-give-me-that-city-editor-stuff' argument. This is the city editor." Outsiders might find it hard to believe, but Agness Underwood was sitting on one of the hottest seats in town. She was the first woman city editor in Los Angeles newspaper history, the first in the Hearst empire and one of the first on a metropolitan daily anywhere in the U.S.

Hearst's afternoon daily, the Herald...