Marjorie Paxson
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Women’s Page Editors and Dogs
We just adopted a five-year-old puggle (a mix of a pug and a beattle) named Pugsley. The video above is our son Curtis meeting his new dog. Several women’s pages editors had dogs. Marjorie Paxson who was a women’s Paged editor in Houston, Miami and St. Petersburg, always had a dog. When she was interviewed for the Washington Press Club Foundation’s Women in Journalism oral history, she had a dog named Typo. When she became a publisher in Muskogee, Paxson became known in the community for bringing her miniature dachshund, Tiger, to work. She said, “He was a small dog and so I thought he needed a name that would…
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Marjorie Paxson & Three Mile Island
The coverage of the potential nuclear disaster in Japan reminded me of Marjorie Paxson’s coverage of Three Mile Island. A longtime women’s page editor, Paxson became the fourth female publisher of a Gannett newspaper. She became the publisher of the Public Opinion. This is her memory of covering Three Mile Island: “Chambersburg is about fifty-five miles south of Harrisburg. And of course, Three Mile Island nuclear plant is just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We found out about it the morning of March 28, 1979. Of course, it moved on the wires and the managing editor — who was a woman, by the way — was in to see me immediately…
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Marjorie Paxson & Three Mile Island
The coverage of the potential nuclear disaster in Japan reminded me of Marjorie Paxson’s coverage of Three Mile Island. A longtime women’s page editor, Paxson became the fourth female publisher of a Gannett newspaper. She became the publisher of the Public Opinion. This is her memory of covering Three Mile Island: “Chambersburg is about fifty-five miles south of Harrisburg. And of course, Three Mile Island nuclear plant is just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We found out about it the morning of March 28, 1979. Of course, it moved on the wires and the managing editor — who was a woman, by the way — was in to see me immediately…
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Sisters of ’77
Today I am going to watch the film, Sisters of ’77. Here is background about the historic conference in Houston, the first federally funded U.S. National Women’s Conference. I am watching it in preparation for going through the papers of Kay Clarenbach at the University of Wisconsin next month. Kay was the director of the conference. Women’s page editors Marie Anderson, Dorothy Jurney and Marjorie Paxson attended the conference as delegates. Jurney and Paxson would go on to edit the official report to the president. It was just another example of the interaction of women’s page journalism and feminism.
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Wonder Woman wears pants
There has been plenty of media attention paid to the makeover of Wonder Woman. This is the Women’s Media Center’s take on it: “Wonder Woman in Pants is Not a Feminist Win.” What the analysis does not address is how hard women fought to wear pants. (I am presenting a paper on this topic at the National Communication Association convention next November.) Up until the women’s liberation movement, women were barred from wearing pants in the workplace and at restaurants. Former Texas and Florida women’s page editor Marjorie Paxson ran into a “no pants” policy when she first became a newspaper publisher for Gannett. On her first day of work…
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Wonder Woman wears pants
There has been plenty of media attention paid to the makeover of Wonder Woman. This is the Women’s Media Center’s take on it: “Wonder Woman in Pants is Not a Feminist Win.” What the analysis does not address is how hard women fought to wear pants. (I am presenting a paper on this topic at the National Communication Association convention next November.) Up until the women’s liberation movement, women were barred from wearing pants in the workplace and at restaurants. Former Texas and Florida women’s page editor Marjorie Paxson ran into a “no pants” policy when she first became a newspaper publisher for Gannett. On her first day of work…
