By JENNA GIBSON
J Alumni News staff
Trudy Lieberman
Trudy Lieberman was in Lincoln in April to receive an award from the J school. But on her second day in town, she was in the Haymarket, talking to people in coffee houses and gas stations and gift shops, asking what they thought about Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and his stand on issues like health care reform.
It’s nearly impossible for Lieberman to stop being a reporter — even for a day or two.
She became interested in journalism when she was very young, watching Walter Cronkite report on the civil rights movement in the 1960s. And when she attended Scottsbluff Senior High School, she worked at the school paper as a copy editor.
But she enrolled at UNL as a political science major.
Then one day when she was eating lunch in Raymond Hall — now Neihardt — someone gave her a booklet on career options. Toward the back, she read about home economics journalism.
When she went home for Thanksgiving, Lieberman announced she would be switching to the School of Home Economics to study for a double major in home economics and journalism. And reporting became the focus of her career.
Reporting on consumers, for consumers
Her background in home economics landed Lieberman her first job: at the Detroit Free Press as the paper’s first consumer reporter.
At that time — the late ’60s — women were few and far between in the journalism world, Lieberman said. And the few women who did work as reporters wrote about home and consumer issues. But Lieberman went further, writing about economic discrimination against blacks, exploring whether a mother on welfare could afford to clothe her family on the state’s welfare allowance.
“Consumer reporting became an integral part of the paper at that time,” she said.
After pushing the envelope in Detroit for eight years, Lieberman decided she needed more education.
“I think a lot of the business community was glad when I left,” she said.
Lieberman applied for and won a Bagehot Fellowship to study economics and business at Columbia University.
“That was really the first year, I think, that women were in the business school there,” she said. “It wasn’t part of what was done in those days.”
Taking it to the next level
After finishing her fellowship year, she stayed in New York and went to work at Consumer Reports, where she wrote about economics and business, including debit cards, trade policy and business lobbying in Congress.
“It was a big trade-off to go to Consumer Reports in those days because you don’t get a byline,” Lieberman said. “The trade-off was that you got to do incredible reporting.”
Eventually, she began reporting on insurance and wrote a series on life insurance and another on Medicare. She won National Magazine Awards for both.
Then she started freelancing on the side for the Columbia Journalism Review, which she described as a career-changing moment.
She still is a contributing editor at the magazine, writing stories on a variety of subjects. She said she had been trying to get away from long-form journalism to try something new. But when CJR asked her to start a blog about health care, she was a bit reluctant.
“What, you want me to write three times a week?” Lieberman remembers saying. “I wasn’t really sure I could do it.”
But she quickly warmed up to the idea.
“It became a wonderful experience. I love it,” she said. “It frees you from the constraints of long-form print journalism.”
Lieberman also writes for The Nation, a publication focusing on political and cultural analysis, and is now a fellow at the Center for Advancing Health.
Recognizing a successful career
At its April J Days celebration, the J school honored Lieberman with an award for outstanding service to the journalism profession by a non-alumnus. While she had a double major in home economics and journalism, her degree was granted by the College of Agriculture.
Andrea Cranford said it seemed like a perfect time to honor someone who has thoroughly covered health care over the years.
“She (Lieberman) has developed quite a following for her health reporting, and that’s such a relevant topic right now,” said Cranford, director of communications for the Nebraska Alumni Association. “She probably is one of the best reporters in the country on the topic of health care. It just seemed like a good time to honor her.”
Although she has been a reporter, a teacher and a board member for various organizations, Lieberman is still firmly rooted in journalism — so firmly rooted that she couldn’t resist getting out and interviewing Nebraskans during her visit to Lincoln.
“You get to see things, you get to understand things. It’s like a window into the world,” she said. “I still love reporting. If I couldn’t report, I think I would just curl up somewhere.”
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