NCA: FOOD EDITOR JANE NICKERSON
I am working on several submissions for the National Communication Association which will be held in Orlando next fall.
I just completed a paper about the life and career of Jane Nickerson, who I consider the first food editor (the food section was typically located in the women’s pages) of the New York Times.
Here is how the paper begins:
In the summer of 1957, New York Times food editor Jane Nickerson lifted a glass of Chassagne-Montrachet at the restaurant “21” and toasted her leaving the newspaper with lunch guests Gourmet magazine editor Eileen Gaden and Gourmet writer Craig Claiborne. Nickerson, who had been at the Times since 1942, announced she was leaving September 1st – whether her replacement had been hired or not. She said to Claiborne: “I honestly think the Times didn’t believe me when I said I was leaving. People simply don’t leave the Times. They stay there until they die or are dismissed.”[i] Editors at the newspaper had interviewed many possible replacements for Nickerson, or as she put it, “anybody who can type with one finger who had ever scrambled an egg.”[ii] Nickerson’s lunch guest Claiborne was ultimately hired for the position and his career quickly overshadowed that of his predecessor. Despite being at the most widely researched newspaper in the country and a career that set the stage for food journalism, she has been largely forgotten by communication and culinary scholars.
[i] Craig Claiborne, A Memoir with Recipes: A Feast Made for Laughter (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982), 122.
[ii] Craig Claiborne, A Memoir with Recipes: A Feast Made for Laughter (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982), 122-3.
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