Paul Myhre and Drue Lytle’s fight to improve the women’s pages
Today I went through letters between Paul Myhre (director of the Penney-Missouri Awards – the top recognition for the women’s pages in the 1960s) and Drue Lytle, women’s page editor at the Honolulu Advertiser.
By the early 1960s, Drue oversaw 15 reporters including stringers from eight major military bases on Oahu. Her section placed at the Penney-Missouri Awards in 1962 and 1963.
Yet, despite her recognitions for her work, she was in a constant battle with management to improve her section. She wrote in a 1964 letter to Paul Myhre: “My pages seem uninspired and I don’t know much to do about it. I have so much mish-mash that the boss says I MUST run – bridge, horoscope, today’s spiritual thought, Ann Landers and the like. It doesn’t leave much elbow room to do the flashy local stuff.”
He responded: “Sympathize with what you call the ‘mish-mash’ that the boss orders. That really eats up space. Why don’t you work out a schedule of two or three features to hit hard every week or drop a series on an important issue every now and then.
Drue listened to that advice and encouraged her staff to conduct issue-based series. Two of those series – one about child abuse and another about the drug LSD – went on to win the Penney-Missouri Award for investigative reporting. Both series were written by Pat Hunter who I will be writing about later this week.
