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Researching Food Journalism History
Research for my upcoming book, The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community, meant some great culinary adventures. Lance & I along with both children attended the International Food & Wine Festival at Epcot last fall as I began looking at how Orlando Sentinel food editor Dorothy Chapman covered the theme park restaurants. Last Christmas, I entered the NY Times Cookie Contest that was held on Pinterest. I submitted by beachy cookie creation. Most newspaper food sections held regular cooking contests for home cooks. In February 2013, we attended the Orlando Chili Cook-Off to look at how the judging for the competition was done. Newspaper food editors were often…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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Food Studies: The Culinary Journalists of the 1950s
My paper “The Culinary Journalists of the 1950s: An Examination of the Women Who Explained the News of Food” has been accepted for the 2014 Food Studies Conference. The paper answers the question: Who were these women who covered the food beat at newspapers in the 1950s? Many false assumptions have been made about these food editors as being simple as best and at worst, as being unethical. The truth is that most editors (almost all female) were trained journalists and/or home economists. Yet, at various times these women have found themselves either marginalized or under attack. This paper seeks to clarify what was newspaper food journalism by looking at…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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Stories of Washington State Food Editors
Columbia Magazine just accepted my pitch about Washington State food editors. (My 2010 article about women’s page journalist Bobbi McCallum was published in Columbia.) I am going to be writing about three of Washington’s food editors: Prudence Penny at the Seattle P-I, Dorothy Neighbors at the Seattle Times and Dorothy Dean at the Spokesman-Review – they are all pen names. What makes this work a challenge was the use of pen names. I want to know who these women actually were. For example, the food editors at the Spokane Spokesman-Review used the pen name “Dorothy Dean” for decades, with several women sharing the continuous byline. The first woman serving in…
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Happy Birthday to Irma Rombauer
The National Women’s History Museum included this post on its Facebook wall today:“Happy Birthday Irma Rombauer! She first published the “Joy of Cooking” in 1931; she changed the face of American cookbooks by including an ingredient list, detailed step-by-step directions, and personal anecdotes. The “Joy of Cooking” is one of the most-published cookbooks in the country–today, it has sold more than 18 million copies.” A.P. food editor Cecily Brownstone became a good friend of St. Louis, Missouri resident Irma Rombauer. Their friendship pre-dated Brownstone’s wire service career. Cecily was a food editor at Parents Magazine when the cookbook first came out. She traveled to St. Louis to meet Rombauer. As…
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Food Editors Using Pen Names
A common practice of newspaper food writers was to use pen names, sometimes at the request of management because they wanted to preserve the continuity of the columnist; after all, it was expected the female reporter would leave employment once married. Food writers were not the first women at newspapers to use pen names. As other historians have noted, female news reporters began using pen names in the late 1800s “because for a woman to work as a newspaper reporter was considered unsavory and disreputable.” Some of the most famous female journalists of that time were using pen names. Columnist “Dorothy Dix” was really Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, and Elizabeth Cochrane…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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Jeanne Voltz Images
Jeanne Voltz images were sent to me from her daughter Jeanne. They will be a great addition to my upcoming book, The Food Section.
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
