Claudia Luther recalls some of the highlights of her 40 years in newspapering, including getting a sexual predator who was a state senator sent to trial and covering some of the major political campaigns during her 33-year career with the Los Angeles Times. But she is most proud of a project that was an outgrowth of her position as special projects editor in the late 1990s. She helped launch the LA Times Festival of Books, which brought together some 200 authors for the first annual event and which has become one of the most prestigious book festivals in the nation. For her role in starting that she earned the Times Mirror Innovation Award.

Claudia served on the Northern Star staff for three years, ending up as managing editor and graduating with journalism and political science degrees in 1965. She remembers fondly that the Star and Tri Swine Omega were the center of her college life.

After spending a year in the media relations department at NIU during school, she began her outside professional career with the Aurora Beacon-News. Then, following a summer trip to Europe, she migrated to California and landed a job on the Anaheim Bulletin, then the Fullerton Daily News Tribune and the LA Evening Citizen News. In 1972 she was hired by the Times, moving from the suburban division up to the Metro paper in 1977.

She said she is “grateful that the Times was big enough that I could try new things and still remain with the same paper all those years.” Her assignments included courts reporter, covering the state legislature in Sacramento, Metro reporter, assistant city editor, political reporter and editorial writer. She also served stints as special projects editor, deputy editor of the entertainment/arts section, acting editor of the Op-Ed page and even an obituary writer. Her obits written about famous people in advance still appear under her byline in the Times, even after she accepted a buyout in 2006.

After leaving the Times, she joined UCLA in a senior media relations position, where she continues working today. She is married to Tom Trapnell, an art director and designer, and they reside on the west side of LA “with no kids, no pool and no pets,” as she put it.