Jacksonville journalist Jessie-Lynne Kerr died this week. She is another example of a great reporter who got her start in the women’s pages. From her obituary:

“On Dec. 7, 1959, she began work as a reporter for the women’s section of the daily paper.
Most of her work was representative of the women’s pages of the day. She would write up weddings, put together the food page, report on charity galas. But on Dec. 16, 1960, during a driving snow storm, two planes collided over Staten Island. Her car was equipped with snow tires and chains, so she was sent to the scene to cover her first hard news story.

“It was my baptism of gore,” she told the Financial News in an interview published in March. “You had burning flesh hanging from the trees, and pieces of Christmas paper. It was just very, very depressing, and I was all of about 21 years old. That was hard on me. I didn’t sleep for days.”

Mrs. Kerr spent about three years at the Advance before she and her husband, Bruce Kerr, a musician and aspiring screenwriter, moved to Neptune Beach in 1963.

At the time, she was pregnant with their first son, Adam. A second son, Jason, now a Jacksonville firefighter, was born in 1969.

The Kerrs relocated to the Jacksonville area to get away from New York’s high cost of living. Initially, her mother-in-law helped them with the $80-a-month rent. But early in 1964 she announced she wouldn’t help anymore. So Mrs. Kerr applied for a job with the Times-Union and was hired, becoming the only woman working on the newspaper’s Metro staff when she went to work on March 9, 1964.”

There are so many great examples of women who started their careers in the women’s pages and then went on to the news side as society changed in the 1960s. In Kerr’s case, it was covering the courthouse. A judge once told Kerr that she knew “more about what went on in the courthouse than any lawyer or judge.”

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Jacksonville journalist Jessie-Lynne Kerr died this week. She is another example of a great reporter who got her start in the women’s pages. From her obituary:

“On Dec. 7, 1959, she began work as a reporter for the women’s section of the daily paper.
Most of her work was representative of the women’s pages of the day. She would write up weddings, put together the food page, report on charity galas. But on Dec. 16, 1960, during a driving snow storm, two planes collided over Staten Island. Her car was equipped with snow tires and chains, so she was sent to the scene to cover her first hard news story.

“It was my baptism of gore,” she told the Financial News in an interview published in March. “You had burning flesh hanging from the trees, and pieces of Christmas paper. It was just very, very depressing, and I was all of about 21 years old. That was hard on me. I didn’t sleep for days.”

Mrs. Kerr spent about three years at the Advance before she and her husband, Bruce Kerr, a musician and aspiring screenwriter, moved to Neptune Beach in 1963.

At the time, she was pregnant with their first son, Adam. A second son, Jason, now a Jacksonville firefighter, was born in 1969.

The Kerrs relocated to the Jacksonville area to get away from New York’s high cost of living. Initially, her mother-in-law helped them with the $80-a-month rent. But early in 1964 she announced she wouldn’t help anymore. So Mrs. Kerr applied for a job with the Times-Union and was hired, becoming the only woman working on the newspaper’s Metro staff when she went to work on March 9, 1964.”

There are so many great examples of women who started their careers in the women’s pages and then went on to the news side as society changed in the 1960s. In Kerr’s case, it was covering the courthouse. A judge once told Kerr that she knew “more about what went on in the courthouse than any lawyer or judge.”

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