Pioneering LA Times Writer Dorothy Townsend Dies

LOS ANGELES — Dorothy Townsend, the first female staff writer for the Los Angeles Times' city section and the lone woman on a team that won a 1966 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Watts riots, has died.

Townsend's cousin Louise Hagan told the Times that she died of cancer at her Los Angeles home March 5. She was 88.

Townsend worked for the Times from 1954 to 1986. After spending 10 years writing features for the so-called women's pages, she insisted on being reassigned to local news.

One of Townsend's former editors, Noel Greenwood, said Townsend asked to be sent on the toughest assignments at a time when women were considered too delicate for hard news reporting.