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Roberta Applegate and her dog
Today while at the YMCA, I read Jim Gorant’s story in Sports Illustrated about the rescue of the Michael Vick dogs. It was very well written. (A favorite line: “If you’re a dog and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals suggests you be put down, you’ve got problems.”) In the story, Gorant writes that “pit bulls have an image problem” and went on to describe that in reality, the dog can be quite gentle. This reminded me of women’s page journalist Roberta Applegate. Described as the “light of her life” was Roberta’s pit bull terrier Binker. Roberta was quick to defend the breed. Carol Oukrop said of her friendship…
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Maggie Savoy, Jim Bellows and Paul Myhre
This letter is from Jim Bellows (Maggie Savoy’s husband) to Paul Myhre, director of the Penney-Missouri Awards. The joking reference to Mary (Paul’s wife) is about the fact that Maggie was recently hired by the L.A. Times. Jim, Maggie and Paul often wrote letters back and forth to each other through the 1960s until Maggie’s death in 1970. Paul died in 1971. The letters showed humor, activism and journalism. The letter can be found in the unprocessed Penney-Missouri Awards papers at the WHMC at the University of Missouri
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Maggie Savoy revisions
I have completed the final revisions on the Maggie Savoy article. The designer begins work on it tomorrow. There are some great images that will go along with the article. It will come out this Spring. Here’s more about Maggie.
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Disney & Eleni
Lance and I (along with Elza and Sami who are visiting from St. Louis) spent my birthday at Disney World. In the above book about Disney, The Magic Kingdom, Miami News women’s page editor Billie O’Day is quoted. A favorite birthday moment was getting an email from Eleni Epstein’s cousin. I’m looking forward to learning more about Eleni. The above photo is from Eleni’s papers at WHMC.
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Anniversary and Archives
Lance and I have now been married five years. During that time, Lance has gotten to know women’s page editors almost as well as I have as we traveled to archives across the country. He chronicled our adventures in his keynote speech “Tales of an Accidental Journalism Historian: What Four Archives in Four Months Taught a College Media Adviser About Pre-Women’s Liberation Newsrooms.” He gave the talk at last Spring’s American Journalism Historian’s Association joint meeting in his role as former president of College Media Advisers. (We met thanks to a student newspaper advisers panel at a conference in Orlando when I was an adviser at UW-Stout.) Here’s a link…
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Drue and Obama
The media coverage of Obama being in Hawaii for the holidays reminds me of Drue Lytle. She was a Penney-Missouri Award-winning women’s page editor of the Honolulu Advertiser in the 1960s. She had something else in common with Obama. They both attended Occidental College, known as Oxy. It is a small liberal arts college in Los Angeles. I plan to start collecting information about Drue’s section during the course of the semester.
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
