Liann Tsoukas

Liann Tsoukas teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh, where her courses focus on African American history, US surveys, contemporary US history, and gender and sport. Tsoukas directs the sport studies certificate and serves as an assistant dean as well as the History Department’s director of undergraduate studies. She has been recognized with several honors including the 2023 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Mal Goode Reporting

The Life and Work of a Black Broadcast Trailblazer

By Liann Tsoukas, Rob Ruck

Mal Goode (1908–1995) became network news’s first African American correspondent when ABC News hired him in 1962. Raised in Homestead and Pittsburgh, he worked in the mills, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, and went on to become a journalist for the Pittsburgh Courier and later for local radio. With his basso profundo voice resonating on the airwaves, Goode challenged the police, politicians, and segregation, while providing Black listeners a voice that captured their experience. Race prevented him from breaking into television until Jackie Robinson dared ABC to give him a chance. Goode was uncompromising in his belief that network news needed Black voices and perspectives if it were to authentically reflect the nation’s complexities. His success at ABC initiated the slow integration of network news. Goode’s life and work are remarkable in their own right, but his struggles and achievements also speak to larger issues of American life and the African American experience.