Slate posted an article today about the death of cookbooks. I don’t quite buy the author’s premise but we have seen a significant shift in how cookbooks have changed – especially in who writes them. For many years, the food editors of newspapers (found in the women’s pages) would write and/or edit cookbooks – examples include Jane Nickerson, Dorothee Paulson and Peggy Daum. Jeanne Voltz wrote several cookbooks while at the Miami Herald and then the Los Angeles Times. Other than the New York Times, few newspapers publish cookbooks anymore. I interviewed cookbook author Jean Anderson a few years ago who said that today, publishers are only interested in cookbooks…

Happy Father’s Day to Lance who knows almost as much about the women’s pages as I do.

I was so excited to receive copies from the Penney-Missouri Award papers about Milwaukee Journal women’s page reporter Lois Hagen. They are available at the Historical Society of Missouri. This is my favorite part of the Awards’ papers: the biographies written by the winners. It is interesting to see how they describe themselves. I also like the great pictures included in the Awards’ papers. (I like that Lois is wearing gloves – I hope to write about the end of the white glove era one day.) This is a letter from the Awards’ Director Paul Myhre to Lois. He  often exchanged letters with the women’s page editors which has helped…

It was announced today that science fiction writer Ray Bradbury died. He was a friend of women’s page editor Maggie Savoy. Above is the memorial book that Maggie’s husband Jim Bellows published when Maggie died in 1970. It is filled with tributes from many well-known people – including Bradbury. He wrote of her: “She was a tall woman, with a soul to match; there was nothing I ever saw that was small or mean. Everything in her expanded and went forth. She gave, and she encompassed with the same gesture.” (pg 7)

Today I ordered the papers of Milwaukee Journal women’s page journalist Lois Hagen from the Penney-Missouri Awards file at the Missouri Historical Society. Hagen covered several areas – I am most interested in her work in furnishings, one of the four Fs of the women’s pages. I am working on a large piece on the Milwaukee women’s pages of the 1950s and 1960s as a case study that re-evaluated the value of the section.

A belated Happy 90th Birthday to one of my favorite women’s page editors – Vivian Castleberry. My article about her years as the Dallas Times Herald came out in 2007. It is available here. My priority is to to complete my book about Viviab this summer/early fall. She is truly a special person in many, many ways.