Writing about Gloria Biggs
Today I am writing about Gloria Biggs who went from St. Petersburg Times women’s page editor to the first female publisher in the Gannett chain. I am focusing on her conflicted feelings about feminism which I discovered in her papers in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri.
On one side were there letters in which she embraced women’s liberation. Biggs responds to a congratulatory letter from the coordinator of the Brevard County Library System: “I was delighted with your “women’s lib” list of books.”
Biggs responded to a letter from the women’s editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer:
I put in a very special category the words you wrote on your card: ‘Thank you for all women.’ Others have expressed the same thought but none quite as movingly as that. I thank you for it. And I won’t forget the debt I owe to all those who have marched and protested and worked in the dark and lonely hours. I hope that I can accomplish something here that just might make it easier for someone else’s tomorrows.”
At other times, Biggs rejected the idea that her promotion was tied to her gender. She responded to Florida Governor Reubin Askew’s congratulatory letter in a way that discounted the concept that her gender made a difference. She wrote: “Although it is, of course, a thrill to be the first woman promoted to publisher of Gannett’s 53 newspapers, I find now that I have been in the job for a while that the fact of being a woman or a man isn’t very significant.”
I hope to complete a case study of her promotion to send to a communications journal.
Writing about Gloria Biggs
Today I am writing about Gloria Biggs who went from St. Petersburg Times women’s page editor to the first female publisher in the Gannett chain. I am focusing on her conflicted feelings about feminism which I discovered in her papers in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri.
On one side were there letters in which she embraced women’s liberation. Biggs responds to a congratulatory letter from the coordinator of the Brevard County Library System: “I was delighted with your “women’s lib” list of books.”
Biggs responded to a letter from the women’s editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer:
I put in a very special category the words you wrote on your card: ‘Thank you for all women.’ Others have expressed the same thought but none quite as movingly as that. I thank you for it. And I won’t forget the debt I owe to all those who have marched and protested and worked in the dark and lonely hours. I hope that I can accomplish something here that just might make it easier for someone else’s tomorrows.”
At other times, Biggs rejected the idea that her promotion was tied to her gender. She responded to Florida Governor Reubin Askew’s congratulatory letter in a way that discounted the concept that her gender made a difference. She wrote: “Although it is, of course, a thrill to be the first woman promoted to publisher of Gannett’s 53 newspapers, I find now that I have been in the job for a while that the fact of being a woman or a man isn’t very significant.”
I hope to complete a case study of her promotion to send to a communications journal.
