11-05-2025
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
The journalism lesson my mom taught me: ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out'
I first tried journalism at age 6. My family was living in Beijing, and I handwrote a two-page newsletter for U.S. expats.
After I made a mistake, a veteran journalist, the Los Angeles Times' Beijing bureau chief, shared with me an old reporting adage about how reporters must double-check everything — especially things about which you feel certain.
That adage: 'If your mother says she loves you, check it out.'
I've never forgotten that. Not least because the journalist who shared it with me was my very own mother.
My mother taught me a lot about journalism. You wouldn't be reading this column if not for her. But, on Mother's Day, with our profession in crisis, Mom's lessons about love seem urgent.
Her biggest lesson: True love is conveyed not just through hugs and trust. Love requires hard skepticism and relentless questioning — two habits she generously gifted me.
Linda (nee McVeigh) Mathews was born in Redlands (San Bernardino County), where her grandparents migrated during the Dust Bowl. But she grew up in Hawthorne, near Los Angeles International Airport, attending Hawthorne High with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson.
Neither of her parents — an aviation assembly-line worker and a custodian — had gone beyond high school. Mom was always honest about how her father's alcoholism cut short her parents' marriage. But she always encouraged me to talk to my grandfather.
Mom, through intelligence and perseverance, won a scholarship to Harvard and joined the Crimson, the campus newspaper, where she met my father, who later became a journalist.
Mom also learned how to navigate a world full of glass ceilings. Her appointment as the Crimson's managing editor, the first woman to hold the role, made national news when the Yale Daily News managing editor sent her a note that read:
'OK you did it. As a member of the female conspiracy to undermine maleness, you have successfully broken into another heretofore male institution,' he wrote, before challenging her to the 'girl's game' of jacks.
She lost at jacks — and won admission to Harvard Law. But she hated the law — rules reflect the preferences of the powerful — and switched to journalism.
Watching her bump up against career obstacles taught me never to trust newsrooms or their leaders. She got hired by the L.A. Times only after the top editor, who didn't want 'girls' on the desk, went on vacation. When my father got transferred by the Washington Post to Hong Kong, the Times refused to send her to compete against my dad. After a year of her out-scooping him at the Asian Wall Street Journal, the Times hired her back.
When she returned to L.A., she sought to rise in the editing ranks, but always seemed to end up deputy to a less diligent man. She eventually landed important jobs at ABC News, the New York Times and USA Today, but never the top one.
Her colleagues, many of whom became my colleagues, have told me she was a victim of glass ceilings and her own style. Colleagues loved my mom's lack of vanity. When one Times colleague told Mom that breast milk was leaking through her blouse (she had just given birth to my baby sister), Mom said it could wait until after deadline.
But her smoother bosses found her too unsparing of their feelings. She believed strongly that journalists must tell each other the truth if we are going to give readers the truth. But the direct style of the working-class Hawthorne girl cost her.
In personality, I'm my mother's child, and her experiences influenced my choices. Which is why I've always remained a reporter and resisted becoming a boss. If someone as brilliant and principled as my mom was blocked by journalism politics, what chance would I have?
I benefited from following Mom's path in other ways. Just as she did, I went to Harvard, became Crimson managing editor and married one of my fellow editors. I became the sort of journalist she was, skeptical about everything and direct with superiors. And while sometimes failing at opportunities elsewhere, I always returned to California. She loved the place, despite the fires and earthquakes, because you could be yourself.
My mom never left behind her large extended family, still a working-class clan of truck drivers and school bus drivers, along with a few teachers and reporters. And she encouraged me to write about Apple Valley and Modesto and other ignored places where our relatives lived. Until recently, my mom would give me feedback on stories; she was particularly critical of wordiness and sentimentalism. I always worked harder on stories knowing that she would read them.
Now she has Alzheimer's. She copes with the disease in a familiar way, by constantly asking us skeptical questions. With every query, I feel her love.
