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Joan Younger Dickinson & Walter Cronkite
Television journalism icon Walter Cronkite’s death over the weekend reminded me of his connection to significant women’s page and women’s magazine journalist Joan Younger Dickinson. Joan’s husband, Bill, was Cronkite’s United Press supervisor during World War II. Joan and Walter knew each other so well that he wrote the introduction to her self-published book about her early career, pictured above. I went through Joan’s papers at the University of Wyoming in 2007 and presented a paper about her at the PCA conference last year. My article about Joan is currently under review.
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Walter Cronkite dies
Television journalism icon Walter Cronkite died this weekend. His wife of 65 years, Betsy, was a women’s page editor in Kansas City when they first married. She was a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. (That’s a photo of Betsy above.) The newspaper that she worked for, the Journal-Post, went out of business one day while she was out on assignment. The story is in Walter Cronkite’s autobiography, A Reporter’s Life, pages 77-78.
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University of Miami Archives
We’re leaving this morning to drive to Miami. While there, we plan to go through the papers of Helen Muir at the University of Miami. She wrote for the women’s page of the Miami News and the Miami Herald in the 1950s. She was a lifelong friend of Marie Anderson, Dorothy Jurney and Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The four women helped create the foundation of Miami. Helen also did public relations work in early Miami – taking over from Dorothy Roe who become the women’s page editor for the Associated Press.
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Writing Women into the Curriculum
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Miami environmentalism
I am in the midst of reading the book, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas – published by the University of Georgia Press. Marjory was a great environmentalist who fought to save the Everglades. Her first job was at the Miami Herald. The book has been helpful in my work on Miami environmentalists – many were women who were encouraged by women’s page journalists, such as Marie Anderson. I just completed an encyclopedia entry on the Miami environment that is going to be published next year by the University of Houston.
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Nelson Poynter papers
Yesterday, Lance and I went to USF in St. Pete. We spent the morning going through the papers of Nelson Poynter and Henrietta Poynter. (They were owners of the St. Pete Times during the best years for women’s pages – the 1960s.) Here is Henrietta’s obituary. There were a few references to top women’s page editors Gloria Biggs and Anne Rowe. There was no record of the numerous Penney-Missouri Awards that the women’s section earned. I am continuing to collect information on the women’s section of the St. Pete Times.
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AJHA Research-in-Progress
I learned on Friday that the paper that Christine and I wrote about the discrimination class-action lawsuits that women journalists filed in the 1970s against newspapers and wire services has been accepted as Research-in-Progress for the American Journalism Historians Association convention in October. (The photo above is of Mary Lou Butcher, who filed suit against the Detroit News – Butcher started as a women’s page journalist.) I’m hoping that Christine will present the paper since my baby is due at the end of October. We worked on the research throughout the Spring semester. Our primary sources came from the WHMC.
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
