journalism history
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Top Food Editors: Day Three & Peggy Daum
Day three of Top Food Editors features Milwaukee Journal women’s page journalist: Peggy Daum. Peggy was a women’s page reporter in the 1950s and 1960s. She became the food editor of the section in 1968 and remained in the position for two decades. Daum was a Milwaukee native who earned an undergraduate degree in journalism and a minor in home economics from the University of Arizona. She later earned a master’s degree in journalism from Marquette University. Her thesis was a study of women’s pages. Barbara Dembski, the Milwaukee Journal’s assistant managing editor of features, said Daum never abandoned her audience. She said of Daum: “Despite her national stature in…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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Top Food Editors: Day Two & Mary Hart
The food column “Ask Mary” was written by “Mary Hart,” although her last name wasn’t Hart; it was Sorenson. Sorenson wrote under the pen name “Mary Hart” when she went to work on the women’s pages at the Minneapolis Tribune in 1945, after graduating from the the University of Minnesota. Her name then was Mary Engelhart, and the editors shortened it to Mary Hart, which they copyrighted. They planned to use that name for all the other women who, they assumed, would succeed her — and each other — every few years. (This was not unusual for the time.) The editors assumed wrong. She stayed for 44 years and the…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
- food editors, food history, food journalism, Jane Nickerson, journalism history, women's page history
More About Jane Nickerson & Journalism History
The creation of the 1950s New York food community likely began with Jane Nickerson at the New York Times. She was the first food editor at the newspaper, beginning in 1942. Over the years, she introduced James Beard to the A.P.’s Cecily Brownstone. Those two were often dinner companions along with Nickerson and her husband. It was Brownstone who introduced the New York food community to Irma S. Rombauer, author of the popular cookbook Joy of Cooking. Later, it was Beard who introduced Julia Child to the food community. Yet, in another example of marginalization, Nickerson rarely get the credit in historical culinary stories. Instead, she has been overshadowed by…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
- food editors, food history, German Potato Salad, journalism history, Peggy Daum, women's page history
German Potato Salad: Recipes & Community Identity
When it comes to community and culinary identity, it is often the dish of a certain city that defines the people who live there. For example, consider Milwaukee and German Potato Salad. According to Milwaukee Journal food editor Peggy Daum: “If you are making German potato salad, you already know how. The right way to make it is the way your mother and grandmother made it. You may argue about it with someone down the block, but you don’t call me.” (Dennis Getto, “Daum Retiring as Food Editor,” Milwaukee Journal, Feb. 17, 1988) This was further proven when no recipe for the popular dish was included in The Best Cook…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
- Bobbi McCallum, Carol Sutton, Dorothy Jurney, Flo Burge, journalism history, Maggie Savoy, Marie Anderson, women, women's page history
How the Tenure Process Can Marginalize Women in History
This post was inspired by Heather Cox Richardson’s post yesterday about mothers in the academy. In addition to excellent points about motherhood, she offered a reminder of what women often bring to research as they sometimes look for new topics or at an issue in a different way. In looking back post-tenure, it worries me that the requirements needed for tenure at an R-1 institution may lead to the marginalization of women in history. At my university, like many other schools, tenure means being a national expert – publishing in national journals. This means that research is largely about national figures, usually men. In fact, in what was intended to…
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Fashion Writers Marian Christy & Bobbi McCallum
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Gender & Restaurant Reviewing
I loved this response published yesterday to a sexist 1961 letter from an university administrator. It was written by journalist and novelist Phyllis Richman. She was the longtime food critic at the Washington Post. This was the part that caught my eye, as she wrote about the mid-1970s: “I co-authored Washingtonian magazine’s restaurant guidebook on the promise that I’d replace the magazine’s critic when he retired. Instead, the editor chose a man who had written nary a restaurant review. I wasn’t really surprised. Besides, in the next year The Post hired me as its restaurant critic. I was the first woman to hold that job at the newspaper, and one…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
