Food Editor Alice Partridge
Thanks to the Informal Association of Cookbook Collectors & Foodists, I learned about food editor Alice Partridge. Here is some information from her obituary beginning with her World War II experiences:
“She came to Buffalo to work for the Associated Press and starting as assistant day editor, became night editor, swing editor for the correspondent and acting correspondent in charge of the bureau. She was always proud that she was the first woman to be in charge of an AP office anywhere in the U.S.
“The scarcity of men in wartime gave women a foot in the door,” she once said.
After her marriage to Charles Alden Partridge, a veteran AP employee, she took a less strenuous job in the women’s department of the Buffalo Evening News. After two years, The Courier-Express asked her to start a woman’s feature page and write a food column on the side. The food department soon expanded and took all her time. She wrote the column for 23 years, seven days a week.
Partridge won several national awards for her food writing, including the Life Line of American Trophy given by the Grocery Manufacturers of America, and the Vesta Award, given by the American Meat Institute for excellence in food reporting.
As Partridge became well known, she was invited to visit food industries all over the country and sometimes abroad. She traveled to Spain as a guest of the olive and sherry interests there. In later years, she toured Europe with her husband, crossing the Atlantic a dozen times. A highlight was a trip to Paris where she interviewed France’s leading food editor, Countess Toulouse-Lautree.”
Partridge’s career is like many of the women who are explored in my book, The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community.
