A glimpse into any newsroom in the 1950s and 60’s would yield a similar sight: a curved table surrounded by a group of smoking, spitting, and drinking men.

But this was about to change in the late 60’s, at the “copydesk” of the New York Times when New York’s largest and most prestigious paper hired Betsy Wade, the first woman to work among its male editing corps.

“I was in a state of abject terror,” Wade, now 78 and retired, recalled recently wearing a baseball hat with the letters J.A.W.S. (Journalism and Women Symposium, she later explained), and her expired press pass around her neck. “I knew no one at the 100 year-old paper, had just passed an arduous copy-editing test and was basically just given some materials including an ash tray, of course, and told to show up at 4:30.”

Betsy Wade’s rise to become senior ranking woman at the Times was arduous and not without sacrifice, but fulfilling none the less for a writer who had dreamed of working for a paper since the seventh grade. At a recent round table discussion given to a small group of all-female Hunter College students, the entertaining former editor described not only her experiences at the Times, but also gave insight into how the face of news is changing today.

Born in New York, Wade had a childhood penchant for language and parts of speech, an interest that was encouraged by her parents. “The dictionary was hauled out at the dinner table all the time,” she said.

Wade attended Barnard College where she worked on the university’s newspaper, and later went on to attend Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism where she was one of just ten women accepted into a program of 65 students. Her first paying newspaper job was at the Herald Tribune where she worked as a reporter, and was later fired for becoming pregnant.

Following that, Wade landed her job at the Times. She described her male co-workers overzealous smoking and drinking habits, which were so over the top that many of them had not only flasks, but also bottles of hard liquor lurking under their desks.

Wade tried her hand at several desks, including the style, metropolitan, and foreign, until eventually settling in as head copy editor, essentially the papers last line of defense against poor syntax, bad grammar, misspellings, fact errors and libelous statements.

It was the pay differential between Wade and her female co-workers and their male counterparts that prompted a group of women at the Times to take on their employer in a famous lawsuit for equal pay. Having been a trustee of the Times’ pension plan Wade had seen the pay breakdown with her own eyes, and the chasm that separated the men’s salaries form the women’s. It was clear that women were being paid less, not promoted, and essentially just moving sideways.

The lawsuit, which Wade inadvertently became the public face of, took four years to be resolved, but was ultimately successful in that they received both compensation and raises. Although it wasn’t the first lawsuit of its kind, as Newsweek Magazine had settled a similar lawsuit first, it was very important. “Because other papers looked at the Times and said, ‘If they can’t beat this group of women, we’re in trouble,’” Wade said.

Wade became even more animated when showing the students a photo of her with a group of other trailblazing women, including Ruth Bader Ginsberg, at an annual lecture for women.

“There’s a real group of shit-stirrers,” she said.

Wade described the occasion as “wonderful,” but then looked off and asked, “But does it make up for a career that never made out what it should have been?” She then reiterated that although she was made out to be the hero and face of the lawsuit, she felt it shouldn’t have been that way.

When prompted to discuss what she thought about the direction the Times, and other news sources were heading toward today, Wade’s demeanor went became wistful. “I feel bad,” she said, “everyone feels bad.”

She next recounted a time, long gone in her opinion, when editors were important, their word mattered, and their authority was great. Wade then went into a thoughtful description of the Jason Blair scandal, and what it meant for the Times as a respected publication. She said that by the time Blair arrived the language itself had become less important than “good, flashy writing.” Blair was unchecked and given free reign, a mistake that wouldn’t have happened in the paper’s earlier years, and one that tragically damaged its credibility.

And then there’s spell check, which she hates. “Spell check will wreck you,” she said “It ends up lowering the believability of a paper.”

Wade then brought the discussion back to a lighter note when responding “rich and beautiful,” to the question of what would she would have been if not a copy editor, and closed by offering some sound recommendations for aspiring journalists. “It’s a question of commitment, and a dire need to want to have people informed,” she said.