Importance of Soft News
I enjoyed this Michele Weldon column in the Huff Post about Nora Ephron who I mentioned in an earlier post about her role as a food writer:
“I did not want to uncover wrongs, chase fires, topple governments or even stay up all night waiting for a secret call. I wanted to write essays, columns, features, profiles, trend stories and books, digging into popular culture and honoring the sanctity of individual stories — even my own. I wanted to correct persistent ill-conceived notions through a personal lens, framed by my own experiences with wit and savvy intelligence that was part Erma Bombeck — but wickedly cool. I wanted to be Nora Ephron.”
This concept is exactly what I have tried to do with my research – elevate the soft news of the women’s pages. (Erma Bombeck’s column typically ran in the women’s pages. She may have written from the perspective of a mother and homemaker but she was also a strong supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.)
Too often, historical researchers reduce the role of columns and features – the journalism that women’s page journalists both embraced and were restricted to in the 1950s and 1960s. Scholars like to focus on the front pages of newspaper – conflict, crime and politics. Yet, as women’s page journalist Vivian Castleberry has said, soft news is where the humanity is.
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