- Bobbi McCallum, Florida Women's Pages, journalism history, Koky Dishon, Roberta Applegate, Ruth Ellen Church, women's history, women's page history
Working as a Public Historian
I have been asked why I spend so much time doing research when that work is not considered research by my university. My answer is that I believe in public history. I have written before about having to twice as hard to get tenure because I study regional rather than national figures in journalism history. While it does not feel fair, the women I write about were rarely treated fairly and faced much bigger hurdles than my own. I have the usual peer-review history journal articles that I publicize through social media, especially Academia.edu and Linkedin. My article about food editor Jeanne Voltz has more than 560 page views on…
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Fashion Writers Marian Christy & Bobbi McCallum
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New Discovery: Ruth Gorrell is Ruth Gray
My thanks to Carol DeMasters for helping me to solve a food journalism mystery. As I had suspected, food editor Ruth Gorrell was also Ruth Gray. I could not find a wedding announcement and there was no reference to a maiden name in Ruth Gray’s obituary. Ruth Gorrell earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Kansas State University. She was the food editor at the Detroit Times in the early 1950s and later at the St. Petersburg Times. Her recipes are included in the 1952 Coast to Coast cookbook and she attended the annual food editors meetings. As Ruth Gray, she began reviewing restaurants in 1974. One restaurant that…
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A New Wave of Women’s Pages
I am working on a response to a column that ran over the summer: A New Wave of Women’s Pages. In it, the writer noted: “gloated a bit the day I noticed The Washington Post’s She the People blog finally did away with the smear of lipstick beneath the “She” in its logo. Though I had nothing to do with the change, I so despised that little swipe of red texture. However its disappearance came about, it felt like a victory.” My response will be related to the chapter I am working on for our Mad Men & Women book: Lipstick was never the enemy. The column is insightful but…
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Quilted News: Mixing Hard and Soft News
Lance & I just got the acceptance email from the Florida Communication Association about our paper “Quilted News: Mixing Hard and Soft News to Create a New Definition for Women’s News.” We will be presenting at the conference in Orlando in October. The paper is an examination of the content of the winning women’s pages of the Penney-Missouri Awards in the 1960s – the first decade of the competition. There is an emphasis on Florida newspapers because in the 1960s Florida newspapers dominated the Penney-Missouri Awards. Overall, they won one-third of all awards during the decade. The content of the sections were examined using textual analysis. Further information was drawn…
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Writing Women into the Curriculum
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AEJMC Presentation About Washington Women Journalists
AEJMC: Washington Women Catherine East & Vera Glaser from Kimberly Voss
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Beacon College Salon Series Talk
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Women’s Clubs, Academia & Social Media
I have spoken several times about the need for academics to use social media to promote their research. Below is an example of how social media and the real world came together. In the Spring, I answered a Tweet from NPR’s the Salt about the cookbooks produced by Junior League organizations as fundraisers. That led to an interview with an NPR reporter and this story. A few weeks ago, I received an email from the president of the Daytona Beach Junior League who had heard the story on the radio. Last night, I spoke to the organization in honor of its 80 year anniversary:“Women’s Clubs: Well Behaved Women Who Helped…
A website devoted to the history of newspaper women's pages
