Linda Robertson

nothing but the truth

Reality can feel like a double-edged sword. Miami Herald staff writer and Miami Palmetto Senior High alumna Linda Robertson has a knack for capturing both the good and the bad in everything she writes. Her path to exposing reality began during her years at Miami Palmetto Senior High School, when she joined the school newspaper, The Panther.

Robertson loves writing, and Palmetto’s English program intensified her affinity for the craft with its captivating courses and educated teachers. Robertson used what she learned in class to write articles for The Panther; however, she applied her skills to more than just that.

Over the course of her high school career, Robertson acquired extensive experience in sports, as she belonged to the track team at Palmetto and enjoyed playing other sports, as well. This gave Robertson a special advantage and provided her with the ability to write articles on the sports activities at Palmetto with a unique perspective.

“The whole collaborative aspect of working on the newspaper with my peers, pushing and encouraging each other, made it clear that this was something that I could excel at,” Robertson said.

Robertson’s sports writing continued well into college, as it remained a large passion of hers. She attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and joined the school newspaper, The Daily Tarheel. At the time, UNC had a popular men’s sports program because the men’s basketball team starred Michael Jordan. The women’s leagues, on the other hand, received much less attention. None of the journalists on the paper vied to write about the women’s teams the way they did the men’s. This gave Robertson the perfect opportunity to take over that section.

Following her time at UNC, Robertson immediately received a job offer from the Miami Herald — an amazing opportunity for a recent journalism graduate — and has since remained a loyal staff writer for the publication.

When Robertson began her career over 30 years ago, men dominated the sports writing field. This caused the few female sportswriters to establish a connection with one another. Robertson formed an early friendship with Michelle Kaufman, a current Miami Herald American sportswriter, although the two worked for different publications at the time. Since then, they have grown close because of both work-related events and personal experiences, and Kaufman has truly gained an understanding of Robertson inside and out.

“Nobody works harder on a story than Linda,” Kaufman said. “She always takes the side of the individual, and I think that’s what she is: a voice. She’s kind of always been a voice for little people… for people who maybe don’t have a way for their story to be told, and she likes to tell it.”

For over 30 years, Robertson has covered stories on a local to global scale with the Herald. They range from profiles on the Williams sisters, to 13 consecutive Olympic games, to the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan debacle. Each of her stories provide a novel perspective on countless topics and people.

“I do not want to do glamour shots, nor do I want to tear people down. I want to have all of us able to relate to each other and our flaws. This sparked my love for writing profiles and human interest stories and trying to figure out what makes people tick,” Robertson said.

Early in her career, Robertson took on a pitch regarding pro-footballer Ted Hendricks’s induction into the Hall of Fame. Rather than taking the traditional route and discussing the high points of his football years, she wanted to get an honest view into Hendricks’s life — the whole devastating portrait.

Hendricks’s career had been placed on a pedestal, so it came as a surprise to readers when Robertson wrote about the athlete’s personal adversities rather than his accomplishments. People only knew the player for how he appeared on the field, but only Robertson attempted to see the real Ted Hendricks, the one who struggled with alcoholism and a loss of control.

“The story sort of became the classic portrayal of a retired athlete who is adrift,” Robertson said. “Who doesn’t know what to do with themselves after the cheering stops.”

After publishing the raw fragments of his life, Robertson received reactions from both sides of the spectrum, which slightly impacted her mindset as a young journalist. Ultimately, she cared about the authenticity of the work, and not the backlash it received.

Many of Robertson’s stories align with this type of exposé: digging deep into one’s life to find the story behind the story. One of her article’s looks at gentrification in Miami, in which Robertson interviews a family who refused to give up their home to a corporation conducting construction on all of the land surrounding their property. Another story told of the life of a fellow Palmetto alumnus, Bobby Lester, who went from starring on the high school basketball team with a promising future to a convict famously known as the Biting Bandit.

Devoted to covering reality, Robertson makes sure her work encompasses everything she stands for as a journalist: finding the good and bad, the flawed and heroic, the shade of gray between the black and white of a person.

Allison Gould Life Editor

a.gould.thepanther@gmail.com Cristele Moztarzadeh Copy Editor