Women’s History Month: Peggy Daum
Day 19 of Women’s History Month features another Milwaukee Journal women’s page journalist: Peggy Daum. Peggy was a women’s page reporter in the 1950s and 1960s. She became the food editor of the section in 1968 and remained in the position for two decades.
Daum had a strong journalism background that she applied to her beat – food. Barbara Dembski, the Milwaukee Journal’s assistant managing editor of features, said Daum never abandoned her audience. She said of Daum: “Despite her national stature in food journalism, she never forgot who her section was for. She wrote it for the typical, salt-of-the-earth, best cook on the block.”
And those neighborhood cooks, her readers, regularly called her with questions about new dishes and in later years questions about new grocery store items like tofu or cilantro. Yet some Milwaukee recipes so defined the community that calls to the newspaper were not necessary. “If you are making German potato salad, you already know how,” Daum said in 1988. “The right way to make it is the way your mother and grandmother made it. You may argue about it with someone down the block, but you don’t call me.”
I have been going through Peggy Daum’s 1962 master’s thesis from Marquette University – Women’s Pages Today: A Comparative Study of Six Newspapers. Her thesis was helpful in learning more about women’s sections at the time. Peggy surveyed three of the women’s page editors I have studied: Marie Anderson, Gloria Biggs and Dorothy Jurney. Peggy also interviewed her boss, Aileen Ryan – who I blogged about yesterday.
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