Valda Cooper
American journalist

Valda Margaret Cooper LavenderValda Cooper (November 15, 1915 – April 12, 2008) was an American journalist and reporter. She was considered to be one of the first women to report on hard news for the Associated Press. She was also reported for a number of publications in New Mexico, including the Farmington Daily Times. Cooper also served as the managing editor of the Farmington Daily Times during her 40-year reporting career.
Cooper was once quoted as proclaiming, "I've got printer's ink in my veins."
Early life
Valda Cooper was born in Melbourne, Australia, on November 15, 1915. She moved to the United States from Australia with her parents when she was just an infant.
Career
Cooper began her career in newspaper journalism at the Borger Herald in Borger, Texas. She worked as a staff member at the Borger Herald for nine years before joining the Associated Press' Bureau in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1943. She was the first woman to work at the New Mexican AP staff. There she covered the political proceedings at the New Mexico State Legislature, including the New Mexico Senate, and the New Mexico State Capitol as a night editor for the AP.
In 1945, Cooper married United States Marines Staff Sergeant Dave Cooper, who was originally from Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, while the New Mexican State Legislature was in session.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Valda Cooper” as american journalist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american journalist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q7909343. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1915, 2008, 1943 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Valda Cooper” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.