I enjoyed this Michele Weldon column in the Huff Post about Nora Ephron who I mentioned in an earlier post about her role as a food writer: “I did not want to uncover wrongs, chase fires, topple governments or even stay up all night waiting for a secret call. I wanted to write essays, columns, features, profiles, trend stories and books, digging into popular culture and honoring the sanctity of individual stories — even my own. I wanted to correct persistent ill-conceived notions through a personal lens, framed by my own experiences with wit and savvy intelligence that was part Erma Bombeck — but wickedly cool. I wanted to be Nora Ephron.”This concept is…

I am almost done writing a book chapter for a book about gossip. The book will be called: When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in United States History. Here is more about it. My chapter is an examination of the role of gossip in the women’s pages of newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s, looking at a political column, an advice column and society and wedding news. In doing so, the concept of “quilted news,” a mix of soft and hard news is introduced. What this quilted approach reveals is how the race and gender roles were changing in the 1950s and 1960s which was clearly reflected in the women’s pages.…