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.

Today I am working on an article about Mary Lou Butcher. Mary Lou’s discrimination lawsuit against the Detroit News opened the door for women at the newspaper. (Mary Lou started out in the women’s pages and moved on to the suburban news side. She was demoted after applying for a bureau chief position.) Mary Lou is in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame and in the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. Mary Lou is part of the Women in Journalism oral history project. The transcript is not available online. I ordered a copy from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection last winter and have been going over the transcript during the…