Agness Underwood was a Los Angeles newspaper woman for forty-two years. During the 1930s and 1940s she was one of the city's best-known court and police reporters. In 1947, she became city editor of the Herald Express, a post she held for seventeen and a half years. During that time, she was the only woman city editor of a major American metropolitan newspaper. No man had ever held the job more than four years, and during her editorship she helped push the Herald's circulation up over 700,000, which made it the largest afternoon daily in the West at that time. The Agness M. Underwood Collection consists predominantly of articles, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, speeches, typescripts, and galley proofs for her book Newspaperwoman, which combine to document both her journalistic work and family life.

Agness Underwood was a Los Angeles newspaper woman for forty-two years. She started her long and successful career in the newspaper business as a switchboard operator in 1926, when she was hired on temporarily by the Los Angeles Record. Her first newspaper experiences began on a part-time basis under the wing of Gertrude Price, helping with the Cynthia Gray Christmas Basket project sponsored by the Record. From time to time, Underwood was also given assignments covering junior women's clubs events. For the next four years Underwood worked on a more or less part-time reporter status.

30.20 linear feet

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