Marlene Sanders, Pathbreaking TV Journalist

Marlene Sanders, one of the first women to break into television journalism, where she compiled a stellar résumé as a reporter in the field and an Emmy-winning writer and producer of documentaries, died at a hospice in Manhattan. She was 84.

In television newsrooms populated almost entirely by men, Sanders made remarkable inroads. In 1964, viewers beheld the rare — in fact, unprecedented — sight of a woman behind the anchor desk of a network news program when she substituted for Ron Cochran, who was sidelined with a throat ailment, on the evening news on ABC. She later took over for Sam Donaldson as the anchor of ABC’s weekend news for three months in 1971. She became one of the first network newswomen to report from the field in Vietnam, in 1966, and one of the first women to rise to the upper reaches of management when ABC made her vice president and director of documentaries in 1976.