Barbara Novak Marshall (March 5, 1944 – February 22, 2009) was an American television broadcast journalist and politician. She was elected three times to the

Honolulu City Council Honolulu City Council is the legislature of the City and County of Honolulu, the capital and largest city in Hawai'i, the fiftieth state in the United States. The City and County of Honolulu is a municipal corporation that manages government asp ...

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

following her retirement from broadcasting. Marshall was known throughout Hawaii for a long career as an investigative journalist, consumer advocate, documentary filmmaker, news anchor and reporter for

KHON-TV KHON-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, serving the Hawaiian Islands as an affiliate of Fox and The CW. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate KHII-TV (channel 9). Both stati ...

television station.

Biography

Born Barbara Novak in

Berwyn, Illinois Berwyn is a suburban city in Cook County, Illinois, coterminous with Berwyn Township, which was formed in 1908 after breaking off from Cicero Township. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 57,250. History Before being s ...

she went on to become the first female graduate of the Radio and Television Journalism program at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

in 1965. As Barbara Novak, she broke through television journalism's

glass ceiling A glass ceiling is a metaphor usually applied to women, used to represent an invisible barrier that prevents a given demographic from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy.Federal Glass Ceiling Commission''Solid Investments: Making Full ...

to become the first woman Radio-TV grad to anchor a regularly scheduled broadcast television news program in the United States. She rose to further prominence as Barbara Marshall in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, where she worked for a decade as an award-winning reporter for two Boston television stations, first for channel 56 WLVI and then for channel 4

WBZ-TV WBZ-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent station WSBK-TV (channe ...

. A number of her interviews and stories were broadcast on

NBC-TV The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

network newscasts. Marshall transported her career to Honolulu in 1979, working for 23 years as reporter, news anchor and producer for channel 2

KHON Khon ( th, โขน, ) is a dance drama genre from Thailand. Khon has been performed since the Ayutthaya Kingdom. It is traditionally performed solely in the royal court by men in masks accompanied by narrators and a traditional piphat ensemb ...

. During her tenure at KHON, Marshall initiated Action Line (a TV-consumer complaint line), live television election coverage and created the first morning news program in Hawaii. She won awards for two documentaries: One on the eruption of the Kilauea volcano, and another on the life of

Challenger Challenger, Challengers, or The Challengers may refer to: Entertainment Comics and manga * Challenger (character), comic book character * ''Challengers'' (manga), manga by Hinako Takanaga Film and TV * ''The Challengers'' (TV series), a 1979 ...

astronaut

Ellison Onizuka was an American astronaut, engineer, and USAF test pilot from Kealakekua, Hawaii, who successfully flew into space with the Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' on STS-51-C. He died in the destruction of the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'', on which he wa ...

. In 2002, she won a seat on the

in her first attempt at elective office. She was reelected to the council seat on September 18, 2004 and again on September 25, 2008 and was elected chairman by her peers on January 2, 2007.

Personal

Marshall died on February 22, 2009, aged 64, after an eight-month battle with

colon cancer Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the colon or rectum (parts of the large intestine). Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowel mo ...

. Marshall's husband, Cliff Ziems, endorsed her aide,

Ikaika Anderson Justin-Michael "Ikaika" Anderson (born February 5, 1978) is an American politician from the state of Hawaii and a member of the Democratic Party. Anderson formerly served as chair and presiding officer of the Honolulu City Council and councilmemb ...

, to fill her city council seat; he was elected in a special election and was sworn into office on May 27, 2009.

References

External links

''Honolulu Council - Barbara Marshall''
KHON2 news story with video. {{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Barbara 1944 births 2009 deaths American television journalists Deaths from cancer in Hawaii Deaths from colorectal cancer Honolulu City Council members University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Media alumni Women in Hawaii politics People from Berwyn, Illinois Politicians from Cook County, Illinois 20th-century American politicians Women city councillors in Hawaii Journalists from Illinois 20th-century American women politicians American women television journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American women