ABJ sports columnist Marla Ridenour honored in Ohio Hall of Fame

On Apr 4, 2022

Akron Beacon Journal sports columnist Marla Ridenour poses for a portrait in Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse before an NBA basketball game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Dallas Mavericks.

Longtime Akron Beacon Journal sports reporter and columnist Marla Ridenour can add another accolade to her honors.

Ridenour was inducted into the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Hall of Fame during an awards ceremony Sunday in Columbus. She was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013.

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A Louisville native and a 1978 graduate of Eastern Kentucky University, Ridenour was the first woman sports editor at the Eastern Progress college newspaper and received the professional achievement award from the EKU Alumni Association in 2019. She became a professional sports writer in 1976 at the Lexington Herald-Leader while still in college and recently celebrated her 45th anniversary as a journalist.

Marla Ridenour interviews the Browns' Clarence Scott after a game in 1981. Ridenour, then working for the Dayton Daily News, wanted no special treatment in the locker room, only the opportunity to compete with her male counterparts.

A trailblazer for women in the journalism field, Ridenour was hired by the Dayton Daily News and became the first female sports writer to cover the Cleveland Browns in 1981, before the NFL mandated equal locker room access. She moved on to the Columbus Dispatch in 1990 to cover the Browns and switched to the Cincinnati Bengals from 1996 to 1998 when the Browns moved to Baltimore.

“I guess I feel like a trailblazer now just because that’s what people say,” Ridenour said in a recent interview. “But what’s weird is back then and in 1976, when I got my first (professional) job (in Lexington), we had three women on the sports staff.”

Marla Ridenour’s career at the Akron Beacon Journal

Ridenour joined the Akron Beacon Journal in 1999 and has covered the Browns, Cavaliers, Indians/Guardians, pro golf and been a columnist.

In his nomination for Ridenour’s Ohio Hall of Fame honor, Beacon Journal Sports Editor Scot Fagerstrom said: “Marla embodies everything one would think when describing a Hall of Fame journalist. Not only is she a trailblazer for women, she is an editor’s best friend. She has uncanny instincts, a great feel for the personal side of a story and delivers clean, well-written copy no matter the topic or the deadline situation.

“I can think of no other journalist more deserving of a Hall of Fame Award,” said Fagerstrom, who has worked with Ridenour since her arrival at the Beacon in 1999.

In college, Ridenour had never written a sports story when the newspaper editor agreed to give her a one-semester trial as sports editor.

“I had some tryout story about intramural racquetball that I guess was good enough,” she said.

Ridenour was not a “jock” growing up, but her late father was a “sports fanatic” who would often take her to minor league baseball games. His boss had season tickets to the University of Louisville basketball team and Ridenour and her father would often attend. They also listened to Cincinnati Reds baseball games on the radio.

In 1976, while still in college, Ridenour was hired by the Lexington paper to be a sports reporter covering the University of Kentucky’s first full-time head women’s basketball coach, Debbie Yow.

Title IX, which prohibited sex-based discrimination, was in its infancy and the paper needed a female writer who could cover the team, including going into the locker room, Ridenour said.

Ridenour was assigned to some small college men’s basketball games, but mostly wrote about women’s high school and college sports for four years.

“The reason I actually left there was because someone at some meeting said ‘women couldn’t cover men’s sports,’ so I knew I had to start looking for another job,” Ridenour recalled.

Marla Ridenour makes jump to pro sports coverage

In Dayton, she started covering the Browns, helped out on the Bengals and was among a handful of female NFL writers and women in sports broadcasting.

This was before women reporters were allowed into male locker rooms. “I was standing outside a locker room with Lesley Visser (the first female NFL analyst) until they started letting people in,” Ridenour said.

Ridenour actually stayed out of women’s locker rooms even back in Kentucky.

“I didn’t really feel like it was right for me to go in the locker room for women’s games when men weren’t allowed. So I did all my interviews out in the hall with them,” she said.

Six months after moving to Dayton, she was entering male locker rooms for interviews.

Ridenour said she has been able to take the “sexual” part of being a female in a male locker room out of the equation.

“This was my chosen dream job and I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize my professional status and access in that regard,” she said.

“One of my co-workers in Dayton used to say I could scan a locker room better than anyone they knew because I sort of developed a way to find people by looking at them from the nose up,” she said. “I would look at the top of their heads just to go out of the way so I wouldn’t be caught looking where I wasn’t supposed to be.”

In 1996, when she covered the Bengals, Ridenour said she was one of the few regular female reporters with access to the locker room.

“They had built a concrete block wall in front of locker room showers. I joked I should have a plaque on it,” she said.

Incidents with players, staff members

Over the years, Ridenour has had a few incidents with players and staff.

“I once had a conversation with one of the Browns … he thought I was just there to find a husband or to tell my girlfriends who is the best looking guy on the team,” she said. “I was trying to convince him that ‘No, this is really my job.’”

During a baseball season, Ridenour was in a Cincinnati Reds clubhouse (locker room) and a prominent player “was giving me grief, saying ‘You don’t belong in here.’” Dayton Daily News reporter Hal McCoy — an Akron native — stuck up for her.

At Indians spring training during the Mike Hargrove years, Ridenour said she had an incident with a coach on his staff who questioned her post-game clubhouse access.

“I went to the PR (public relations) guy and said ‘Listen, I’ll take this stuff from the players, but I’m not taking this from the coaches,’ so they nipped that in the bud right away.

“There were a few remarks early in Browns days. You did get the impression that they’re watching what you’re wearing and they’ve got your eye on you. But it wasn’t as overt or really people weren’t really saying anything like the few comments I had in baseball,” she said.

Ridenour said she has tried to mentor other female sports reporters over the years, even being very frank to try to “scare” them in knowing how demanding the job can be.

“It’s not just writing anymore,” she said, adding that there are social media demands and video or audio.

She tells college students “you’re not going to get weekends off. You’re not going have a 9 to 5 job,” she said. “I almost tried to scare them straight into what they’re getting themselves into, but it’s even worse now. It’s like 24/7.”

On two nights last week, Ridenour was up until 3 a.m. writing after a Cavs game.

‘You have to prove yourself’

Ridenour said being a sports reporter and a female sports reporter in particular does mean “you have to prove yourself” and that you’re knowledgeable about the sport.

But Ridenour said reporters have to do that every year with a new team and new players.

“You’re going to have to do more of that when you’re when you’re a female in this business. You have to be versatile,” she said.

Ridenour tells college students they don’t have to be a journalism major, but they need to be good writers and interviewers.

“What’s been the key for me is you have to learn how to interview people and you have to talk to people. You have to have a conversation. You don’t want to be putting them on the spot. You want to put them at ease. You want to get them to open up to you. You want to just pretend like you’re chatting with a friend,” she said.

Ridenour is honored to receive the Hall of Fame nod.

“Winning an award in Ohio is an incredible achievement just because of how many wonderful people are in the business.”