PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia has lost a legendary journalist. Trudy Haynes, the city's first Black TV reporter, has died of natural causes at the age of 95. For decades, the broadcast pioneer was an inspiration to many journalists who worked with her or followed in her trailblazing footsteps.
"She was a living legend,” said Ernest Owens, 30, president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. “She was going to PABJ meetings up until a month ago.”
Owens recalled a conversation he had with Haynes.
"Keep telling the truth. She used to say keep, keep, keep going at them. Keep telling the truth. And that stuck with me," he said.
Owens witnessed her tireless mentorship when he was working with her for a fellowship at public access media center PhillyCAM a year ago. “She was producing there, and she just had an eye for the camera,” he said. “She was always seeing younger people who were interested in broadcast, and younger journalists, and she was giving people real solid advice."
'You could hear Trudy before you saw her.'
KYW Newsradio anchor Kimberly Adams was an anchor and reporter at KYW-TV in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and she worked with Haynes daily.
“You could hear Trudy before you saw her. She would have these little bracelets that would be jingling, and I would say, 'Here comes Trudy,'" Adams recalled.
"As a Black woman, I looked at her one day, and I just thought to myself: This is a woman working as a reporter during the most volatile time in our country, during the civil rights era. She took all of the hits for us, and she basically was the bulletproof vest for us. She is somebody who we all looked up to. And still to this day, we hold her as a true icon and a true trailblazer."
'She had that fearlessness.'
Whether she was talking to an entry-level worker, a seasoned broadcast professional or a celebrity, Haynes treated everyone the same, said KYW Newsradio anchor Michelle Durham, who was an intern at KYW-TV in the late ‘80s.
"Always elegant and always eloquent,” Durham said. “And [she] never considered any question — that this intern had — a problem. She would answer any question I had."
"She had that fearlessness. She was Trudy. That was it," Durham said. "She was a good change. And she went and she told it like it was. She just stood up to anything and just wasn't fearful. That's a crucial lesson for a young intern to learn in the pursuit of journalism. You have to be somewhat fearless. And so I've tried to emulate that in my career."
A tremendous impact on Philadelphia public life
Longtime Philadelphia TV anchor, now a KYW Newsradio special contributor, Larry Kane said Haynes was truly a trailblazer.
"Trudy was a very special person to the people in the newsroom and the men and women who came after her — during the history she made in the early days, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the tremendous impact she had on Philadelphia public life,” Kane said.
“Her service in the community was unmatched by any broadcaster in this town or anywhere in the country. She certainly left a legacy of freedom, breakthrough and a shattering of a ceiling in a day when that was really, really hard to break in many, many ways."
The responsibility that comes with being 'the first'
A native of New York City and a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., Haynes got her start in broadcast journalism in Detroit, when a WXYZ-TV news manager hired her in 1963. She made history there, too, as the first Black person in the city — indeed, in the United States — to report on the weather on television.
In a 2021 interview with CBS3, she said she thought that manager had “something in mind” when he hired a woman who was not the typical blond-haired, blue eyed beauty — “I can use this lady, and I can be first.”
She used that gig as a springboard to become a TV reporter in Detroit — and that work is what got the attention of KYW-TV in Philadelphia, where she joined Eyewitness News in 1965. And there she stayed for 33 years until she retired in 1998.
She said she accepted the responsibility that comes with being the first Black TV reporter in Philadelphia — again, the first in the nation — facing sexism and racial discrimination head on.
Through her career, Haynes interviewed presidents, governors and mayors, celebrities and prominent newsmakers, from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Hoffa to Jackie O, Sylvester Stallone to Tupac Shakur. And she helmed KYW-TV public affairs programs “The Trudy Haynes Show,” “Sunday Magazine” and “Sunday Side Up.”
Haynes was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 1999.
Funeral arrangements are pending.