"Even as a college student, Ms. Morrissy Merick began blazing trails for women. She was the first woman to be named sports editor of The Cornell Daily Sun and the first woman admitted ..etc."

And that's when her "trail-blazing" likely ended.  Vietnam makes the headline, but by the time Merick got to Saigon in the late 1960s, women reporters--as this obit suggests--were no big thing.  

What WAS a big thing were at least 3 women reporters in the country very early in the war, back around 1962 : Beverly Deepe (Newsweek); Marguerite Higgins (Vietnam was her third war); Pam Saunders--it was Saunders' unexpected appearance in front of Westmoreland on the border of Laos that prompted him to ban women from combat.

Some perspective: Merick worked for a fledgling TV network, the "poor boy" in comparison to CBS and NBC.  Everyone watched CBS' Cronkite.  Many watched NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.  But who was the ABC anchor? Hmm...

Read more in Once Upon A Distant War.