Dorothy Roe and Trial Coverage
All of the coverage of the Casey Anthony trial (a local story for us here in Orlando) has me thinking about one of the few roles for women in journalism outside of the women’s pages: as “sob sisters.” These women covered trials in a sensational way. One woman who was first a sob sister and then a longtime women’s page editor for the Associated Press.
Here is from an earlier post on Dorothy:
Dorothy Roe was born in 1905 in Alba, Missouri. She graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1924 and soon began her career as a reporter in El Dorado, Arkansas. It was a weekly newspaper that soon became a daily paper. Roe described it as an ideal first job in the booming city. She wrote for both morning and evening editions, covering police, courts and oil field exposes. She also sold advertising and wrote a shopping column.
She then joined the Los Angeles Examiner. During her brief time there, she wrote, sold and illustrated a shopping column. Missing her journalism experiences, she moved on to Chicago to write Sunday features for the Hearst morning newspaper. She soon worked for the Universal Service in New York. For the first six years, she wrote for the national desk. Most frequently, she covered murder trials and kidnappings.
In 1941, she joined the Associated Press in New York. She wrote that she found women’s page journalism, “surprisingly exciting, after her long experience in the more lurid phases of straight news reporting.” She also noted, “hemlines often make headlines” and she was able to do pioneering work on women’s news. She was the main women’s editor for the Associated Press for 19 years. In 1959, she earned the Missouri Honor Medal. She later taught at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Her papers are in the National Women and Media Collection. I have done some initial collecting of her papers.
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