Editor J. Edward Murray
While many male editors did understand what it was that women’s page editors were trying to do to improve content, several others did. In that category, I would include J. Edward Murray or J.E.M. Letters found in several archives demonstrate his mentoring of women and his value of women’s pages.
One example was found in the papers of women’s page pioneer Dorothy Jurney in the National Women and Media Collection. Jurney worked with Murray in the New Direction for News project, which documented news coverage of women’s issues, in more than a decade of her retirement. In their correspondence, Murray mentioned the difficulty that he and other male editors faced during the early years of women’s liberation: “Some editors, like me, who have tried their best for a long time to learn how to be fair concerning the news of women now find themselves too often accused of never having thought about the problem at all.”
I have long regretted that I never got to interview J.E.M. Then, I came across this column, Belated Thanks to an Editor. In it, the writer noted that J.E.M. declined to be interviewed just a few months before his death. Somehow this made me feel better. Maybe he would have declined my request, too.
I plan to write a paper about the male editors who supported the progressive women’s page editor.
