Quilted News: Mixing Hard and Soft News

Lance & I just got the acceptance email from the Florida Communication Association about our paper “Quilted News: Mixing Hard and Soft News to Create a New Definition for Women’s News.” We will be presenting at the conference in Orlando in October.

The paper is an examination of the content of the winning women’s pages of the Penney-Missouri Awards in the 1960s – the first decade of the competition. There is an emphasis on Florida newspapers because in the 1960s Florida newspapers dominated the Penney-Missouri Awards. Overall, they won one-third of all awards during the decade. The content of the sections were examined using textual analysis. Further information was drawn from oral histories and the archives containing the papers of the Penney-Missouri Awards at the National Women & Media Collection. What was discovered was a news concept of “quilted news,” a mix of soft and hard news was introduced in the women’s pages.
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The quilt above was created by Dallas women’s page editor Vivian Castleberry. Here is a link to my article about her.

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