SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 14) - Melissa Ludtke (Groundbreaking Journalist ) - Locker Room Talk

Relying on a near half-century of deep research and reflection, Melissa Ludtke recounts her landmark federal case in “Locker Room Talk.”

In 1977 and ’78, as a Sports Illustrated reporter, Ludtke was the winning plaintiff in Ludtke v. Kuhn, a U.S. federal case that Time Inc. and lawyer Fritz Schwarz Jr. brought against Major League Baseball. In the courtroom, Justice Constance Baker Motley — a civil rights icon  — found that MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn had violated Kuhn’s constitutional rights by denying her the same access the male reporters had at Yankee Stadium during the ’77 World Series. Neither the legal win nor the affray in the court of public opinion came easily. But within a decade, Ludtke notes, the ranks of female sports journalists had increased enough to start AWSM (Association of Women in Sports Media).

Ludtke, a former TIME magazine correspondent, has also worked at Nieman Labs. She lives in Massachusetts and writes the Let’s Row Together newsletter on Substack.