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Cecily Brownstone’s Papers
I just came across this 1951 photo taken at the home of Associated Press food writer Cecily Brownstone. It is a party for a new release of The Joy of Cooking. It is in Brownstone’s paper in the Fales Library at NYU. Here is a story about her papers and the mass cookbook collection that she donated. From 1947 to 1986, she wrote two columns and five recipes a week for the Associated Press which ran in newspapers across the country. She was a member of the New York food establishment. I am presenting a paper about her at the National Communication Association convention this fall in Orlando.
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Green Bean Casserole & Food Editor Cecily Brownstone
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Poppy Cannon as Newspaper Food Columnist
As I am putting together a book proposal about newspaper food editors, I came across some interesting information about Poppy Cannon who had a cooking column in several newspapers. I had known her as the author of the (often mocked) Can-Opener Cookbook. Some writers have described Cannon as the original Sandra Lee although I think Cannon was more than a short-cut food writer. Cannon had a rich background both personally and professionally. She wrote an interesting historical cookbook: The President’s Cookbook. She was the food editor at several women’s magazines including House Beautiful and Ladies Home Journal. She was married several times, including to NAACP leader Walter White – which was…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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Home Economics and the Women’s Pages
I enjoyed this book by Carolyn M. Goldstein about this history of home economics but was disappointed there wasn’t more about the home economists who became recipe testers and food editors for the women’s pages of newspapers. It was rather common for female students to major in journalism and minor in home economics (or the other way around) as training for the women’s pages. I did enjoy the background material about home economics – especially the final chapter about the changing of the field (or lack of) in the 1960s and 1970s that led to its down fall. It was very close to what led to the end of the…
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The St. Petersburg Times, Anne Rowe and DAY
I am finishing up a paper about the elimination of the women’s pages and the introduction of a newsfeature section at the St. Petersburg Times in 1969. It was overseen by Anne Rowe – pictured above. (Her work is often overshadowed by Ben Bradlee’s work creating a Style section at the Washington Post which predated the change at the Times by a few months.) It was the beginning of change for women in journalism and Rowe deserves more credit. This is how the paper begins: It was April 1964 and five young journalists from St. Petersburg were gathered in a hotel room on the Gulf Beaches. Known as the…
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Cookbooks and food section history
This NPR story from Friday, “Long before social networking, community cookbooks ruled the stove,” was an interesting part of culinary history. I would, however, disagree with this statement: “With community cookbooks, Smith says, “you get an insight into history that isn’t there from any other source, it’s not in newspapers.” After all, newspaper food sections had a long of sharing recipes. Readers regularly wrote in to ask about an old recipe they had lost or about how to replicate a dish from a local restaurant. The above book is a collection of such requests and responses from a food reporter at the Los Angeles Times.
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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First American Women’s Page
I have been able to confirm that one of the first women’s page in a U.S. newspaper was in the Milwaukee Journal – not in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World as many journalism histories state. For example, the Encyclopedia of American Journalism notes that Pulitzer was the first to included weekly articles aimed at women in 1891 and by 1894 had a regular “For and About Women” section. The image above is from the Google project that scanned issues of the Milwaukee Journal from its beginning. It proves that on August 9, 1885 the Journal published a section called: “Maids and Matrons” that was clearly intended as a women’s page.…
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
