Jeanne Voltz

One of the common elements of women’s pages were the food sections. One of the top food editors in the 1950s and 1960s was Jeanne Voltz.

Voltz was born in Collinsville, Alabama. She went to school at the Alabama College for Women and began a career in journalism in 1940 in Birmingham when few women were in the field. She was self-educated about food and was a fan of barbeque well before it became popular. In the 1950s, she was food editor at the Miami Herald. The newspaper had a large food section each Thursday. Dorothy Jurney, who was known as the godmother of the progressive women’s sections, was overseeing Voltz’s section as the time. Jurney said of Voltz: “A very good newspaper woman—food or otherwise.”

Miami Herald colleague Marjorie Paxson, who went on to become the fourth female publisher at Gannett, said of Voltz, “Our food editor, Jeanne Voltz, was just marvelous, and I’ve still got some recipes that I’ve saved of hers. She had a very practical approach but at the same time she knew the food field and was very good.”

Then, in the 1960s, Voltz became the food editor at the Los Angeles Times. She was a six-time winner of the Vesta Award for newspaper food editing and writing. She went on to become food editor of Woman’s Day in New York in 1973. Voltz was founding members of the New York chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, a professional organization for women in food-related careers. It was created because there was no organization devoted to women in the food and wine industry which was largely dominated by men. Voltz was president of the organization from 1985 to 1987 and helped it expand. She wrote numerous cookbooks.

Married with two children, Voltz noted that she initially played a supporting role to her barbecuing husband. She wrote, “In the fifties all husbands barbecued, with wives as chief assistants and errand girls.”(She would go on to write on of the most significant cookbook on barbecue years later.) She soon increased her role in front of the grill, noting that “a woman can barbecue as well as a man.” As society was changing, Votlz guided two of the most significant food sections in the country. An analysis of her work the Los Angeles Times, show that women’s pages were laying the foundation for food journalism years before the supposed surge in the topic. It also shows that food journalism can tell much about society at that time.

I am in the process of analyzing Voltz’s work at the Los Angeles Times.