Robin Herman, who as a hockey reporter for The New York Times broke a gender barrier when she became one of the first female journalists to enter a men’s professional sports locker room in North America, died on Tuesday at her home in Waltham, Mass. She was 70.
Her husband, Paul Horvitz, said the cause was ovarian cancer.
Ms. Herman began covering the New York Islanders for The Times in 1974, but National Hockey League teams had routinely denied her the same locker room access that they gave to male reporters seeking to interview players after games. Like other reporters, she wanted to quote players to add their insights and perspectives to her game stories, which she had to file under tight deadlines.
But in those years, professional teams in all sports believed, to varying degrees, that female sports reporters — what few there were at the time — did not belong in an inner sanctum like a locker room, where men would be in various states of undress. Players who agreed to talk to female reporters had to leave the locker rooms and meet them in hallways.