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women’s pages and housewives
The New York Times has a great essay about housewives in the 1950s, focusing on the witty writer, Phyllis McGinley. Here’s a segment: “A liberal arts education is not a tool like a hoe . . . or an electric mixer,” McGinley wrote, dismayed at a world she thought was conspiring to make women feel as though any acquired erudition would be wasted in a life of riffling through recipe cards. “It is a true and precious stone which can glow as wholesomely on a kitchen table as when it is put on exhibition in a jeweler’s window or bartered for bread and butter.” She went on to dismiss the…
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Women’s Page Editors and Sports
Today, Lance and I are going to the Champs Sports Bowl Game in Orlando. The University of Wisconsin is playing Florida State. Several of the women’s page editors were sports fans. Miami Herald Club editor Roberta Applegate regularly wrote to her family about the Michigan State football and basketball teams. The Fort Lauderdale News women’s page editor Edee Greene began her journalism career as a sports columnist while in high school in Palatka, Florida. The biggest sports fan on my list was the Miami News women’s page editor Billie O’Day.She was a big fan of the University of Miami football team and was a regular on the sidelines. That’s her…
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Betty Preston Oiler memo
This memo is from Glendale News-Press women’s editor Betty Preston Oiler to Gloria Biggs, a Florida women’s page editor. Betty is writing to congratulate Gloria on becoming the first woman to be a publisher of a Gannett newspaper. The women knew each other through the Penney-Missouri workshops. In later years, Betty, herself, would become an executive editor. Here’s an earlier post about Betty. This letter can be found in Gloria’s papers in the National Women and Media Collection at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. I am in the process of writing about both Gloria and Betty.
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Jim Bellows
Jim Bellows was married to legendary women’s page editor Maggie Savoy. I have an article about Maggie coming out this spring.
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Bellows, Voltz and Christmas
For Christmas, Lance got me the book, 80:Our Most Famous 80 Year Olds. It is edited by Jim Bellows. Jim was a great editor at several major dailies, including the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Star. Jim was an advocate for women at the newspapers he oversaw. He was married to influential women’s page editor Maggie Savoy. (There’s a chapter devoted to Maggie in the book shown in this post, The Last Editor.) Here’s a link to an interview with Jim. Here’s another interview link. Lance and I are working on a paper about Jim and other progressive male editors. Lance and I have spent the last two…
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Vera Glaser oral history
Yesterday I sent off a conference abstract about Vera Glaser. Here is a link to an earlier post about Vera. Last week, I received CDs of an oral history that Vera did with the National Press Club in 1994. This week, I’ve been transcribing parts of the oral history. It’s wonderful to listen to her speak about her career.
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
