Judy Woodruff Has Moderated Too Many Presidential Debates to Count

When Judy Woodruff, 73, is prompted to think about the first debate she ever moderated, the tireless anchor commits that cardinal journalistic sin. She...hesitates.

But she has a good reason. She's covered more debates than she can count; so many, in fact, that she can't remember exactly which came first. She guesses it was at one of her earlier jobs, still just out of school. After a stint at the ABC affiliate in Atlanta, she moved to NBC News to cover the 1976 presidential campaign. She's been on that beat ever since, reporting on presidential races with her usual zeal. Tonight she'll question Democratic presidential hopefuls at the debate in Los Angeles. She's been at this for decades, but it's still a little thrill—and a lot of work—to grill the candidates.

The septuagenarian, who runs on a stream of iced skim lattes (even in the winter), morning workouts, and at least six hours of sleep, will face seven contenders tonight, including Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), former vice president Joe Biden, and Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.). When we talk, she and her co-moderators, which include Politico chief political correspondent Tim Alberta, PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, and PBS NewsHour senior national correspondent Amna Nawaz are deep into their preparations.

"Our staff and the Politico staff have done a phenomenal job putting together a briefing with the positions of the candidates and transcripts from their [previous] debates," she says. "We come together and think about: How can we illuminate differences among the candidates that haven't been evident before now? Because the whole point of these debates is to give voters a better understanding of the candidates, and anything we can do to help move that along is why we're there."

Back at the start of her career in the 1970s, the idea that multiple women would moderate a presidential debate was inconceivable. There weren't a ton of female journalists, period. As Woodruff tells it, each station had just about one. So as Woodruff has climbed the ranks, she made sure to be an advocate for other women who wanted to fill broadcast news roles. That commitment paid off in 2013, when she and the late Gwen Ifill were named the first two women to coanchor a national news broadcast, PBS NewsHour. "We knew it was historic to name two women as coanchors, and the statement that it made about having not just two women but a woman and an African American woman," Woodruff recalls. "People would look for friction [between us]. And we decided very early on that we were going to be as close as we could be. And we kept that up. So it was a very special relationship and obviously it was devastating when we lost Gwen."

Woodruff is now the sole anchor of the show, and even after over four decades in the business, the shine hasn't worn off. "I have bottomless curiosity and I just love American politics," she says. "I love American history and it doesn't get any more vital than what they're covering now."

Here Woodruff reflects on her friendships with other iconic female journalists, her favorite presidential debate, and what she appreciates about Richard Nixon.

On breaking into the (male-dominated) news industry

The first job I had right out of college was as the secretary for the newsroom of the ABC station in Atlanta. I had never studied journalism. I just knew that I was interested in covering politics. But at my job I was answering the phone, writing letters for the news director, and cleaning film. I tried to stay late to follow what the reporters, the producers, and the camera crews were doing and to try to talk to them. I remember I would bug the news director to let me go follow a crew around and just see what they did. And he said, "Why would you want to do that? We already have a woman reporter. Why would you even want to be interested?" And they did. [The female reporter] did the weather for the news at 6 o'clock every night and she did feeder pieces. So at that point the station had one woman reporter. And the same was true of the other two, the CBS and the NBC station. They each had one woman.

When I was hired by the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, they had just lost their woman reporter. So I was hired. They didn't want to say it was the case, but I was basically replacing the woman reporter. This was the early 1970s, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was telling the broadcast networks that they had to hire more women and put them on the air or their licenses would be in jeopardy. This was actually during the Nixon administration. I think people haven't given Nixon enough credit [for this], but it was under his administration that they started requiring that the broadcast networks bring in more women. And so I was a direct beneficiary of that and so were a number of others. We call ourselves the pioneers. We've talked about this—about how we benefited from that moment. [60 Minutes's] Lesley Stahl, Connie Chung—that's when we all started working in television.

On "the pioneers" of broadcast news

In many ways we felt we were being pitted against one another because we were in such a minority. By then each network had a few women. For example, I remember when Lesley Stahl came to the White House, my bosses at NBC would compare my work to Lesley's work. They wouldn't mention Sam Donaldson at ABC or Bob Schieffer at CBS, who was Lesley's colleague. They would often say, "Well, you know, you did this and Lesley did that." And I'd say, "Well, why are you just focusing on us?" But at the time you had to accept it because it was the case. There were fewer women.

It was almost as if the bosses were sitting around thinking, Okay, where can we put this woman? Where are we going to put that woman? And what is she going to do? It was as if they had a different category for women. But you lived with it because it was just the way it was. Having said that, we all got to know each other. [NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent] Andrea Mitchell and I became close friends very quickly and we've stayed very close friends. I mean, she's the godmother to our daughter. Lesley and I are good friends. She's in New York and I'm in Washington, but we stay in touch as much as we can. I'm very fond of Connie Chung and the other folks I mentioned. I see [ABC News Radio White House correspondent] Ann Compton, and we've stayed in touch.

So I think there were bonds that transcended the competition, because we were all kind of in it together. But we did all want to do well in our careers. We were all competitive. You had to be competitive to do this work. You couldn't relax. But we had a lot in common. Several of us had young children. Lesley had a daughter. I didn't have children at first, but after I was married, I ended up having three children. Ann Compton had, I think, four. So we would compare notes about family and things like that.

On one of the most memorable debates she's moderated

I've moderated a lot of primary debates over the years. But the one that's the most memorable for me was in 1988. It was the vice presidential debate for the general election between [former United States secretary of the Treasury] Lloyd Bentsen and [former vice president] Dan Quayle. Quayle was the choice of George H.W. Bush and Bentsen was the choice of Michael Dukakis, who had been the governor of Massachusetts.

The truly memorable line from that debate was at one point Dan Quayle compared himself—because of his youth and the promise he held for the future—to JFK. Bentsen used that and seized on it and said, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy." And the room exploded. Those of us who were up there asking questions just figured, well, this is the end of this election. You know, he's really showed him. But of course, Bush and Quayle went on to win the election even though Lloyd Bentsen had a great line that was the headline everywhere the next day.

On mentoring the next generation

I try to be available as much as I can and reach out to younger female journalists when they arrive at PBS. Whatever their job is—whether they're a desk assistant or a producer or on the air. I try to be available to them. I know it's sometimes intimidating or forbidding for people to approach the anchor, but I try to be as available as possible and say, "Please come talk to me if there's an issue or if you just want to just shoot the breeze or if you want to talk about your career or family or something, I'd like to be available."

In the beginning of my career, there weren't that many women. But today I'm so happy to be able to look around the newsroom and I see women who are researching, who are writing, reporting, shooting stories for us, editing. And I think we have a very open and frankly very diverse newsroom. That's what we're committed to. It's bringing women along, bringing along people of color, people of all backgrounds.

I would put our newsroom up against just about any other when it comes to diversity. We've done quite a remarkable job I think, but the job is never done. I would never rest on our laurels and say, "We have arrived." There are things we have to think about all the time. We are constantly thinking about whether our guests are diverse. When we're discussing the law or Congress or international affairs, foreign policy, have we thought about women, women's perspectives? Have we thought about guests who come from different nationalities and different ethnicities? The job is never done.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Samantha Leach is the associate culture editor at Glamour. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @_sleach.

Originally Appeared on Glamour