The women's page (sometimes called home page or women's section) of a newspaper was a section devoted to covering news assumed to be of interest to women. Women's pages started out in the 19th century as society pages and eventually morphed into features sections in the 1970s. Although denigrated during much of that period, they had a significant impact on journalism and in their communities.
In 1835 New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr., created the first newspaper society page. [1] In the century's final two decades, a "motley assemblage" of stories presumed to be of interest to women began to be gathered together into a single section of newspapers in Britain, Canada, and the US. [2] : 142
In the 1880s and 1890s, newspaper publishers such as Joseph Pulitzer started developing sections of their papers to attract women readers, [3] : 1 [4] : 38 who were of interest to advertisers. [3] : 5 Industrialization had profoundly increased the number of branded consumer products, and advertisers recognized that women were the primary purchasing decision makers for their households. [3] : 5 Advertising within women's sections focussed on department stores. [4] : 38 Proprietors of newspapers competed for women readers, who both boosted subscription sales but were of great interest to advertisers, who recognized that women were important decisionmakers for family purchases. [2] : 32 News historian Gerald Baldasty put it that, "For the newspaper industry, a woman's charm was purely financial." [5] : 126
Sections focused on the "Four F's" – family, food, furnishings, and fashion – and on society news and advice and recipe columns. [3] : 1 Most women covered by the sections were wives, daughters, or brides of prominent men. [4] : 40 Newspapers typically hired women to staff these sections. [3] : 1
The popularization of women's pages coincided with the first wave of feminism. [3] : 10 Media scholar Dustin Harp said she found no evidence that women of the time viewed these sections otherwise than positively, as they offered a rare opportunity for expression, but also surmised that feminists may have viewed them with mixed reactions as the sections also reinforced stereotypes. [3] : 10
By 1886 the New York World carried columns aimed at women. [4] : 39 By 1891 the Sunday issues featured a page of fashion and society coverage. [4] : 39 By 1894 the daily issues featured a page headlined "For and About Women." [4] : 39
By 1900, many metropolitan newspapers had a women's section covering society and fashion. [4] : 42
By 1920 women's page journalism, sometimes called "home page journalism" was being taught in colleges. [4] : 39 As late as 1949 women's page journalism classes at Columbia University included instruction that news of "crises, disaster, tragedies" belonged on the front pages while the inside pages were "like the inside of a home" and that women journalists should contribute by focussing on wholesome, uplifting topics in the women's sections. [4] : 39–40 According to media scholar Jan Whitt, the implication was that only male journalists understood and could write about hard news. [4] : 40
In addition to being prevented from working in other departments, women journalists working in the women's section were often denigrated by male journalists. Their working spaces were given names such as the "hen coop." [4] : 40 For decades, the majority of women journalists worked in women's sections. [6] : viii
As in many fields, journalism opportunities for US women changed dramatically during World War II. [4] : 41 Many men left their jobs to go to war, and women were tapped to perform those jobs, which before the war had only been open to men. [4] : 41 Many women were required to sign waivers agreeing to leave these jobs when the war ended, but during the war women journalists developed their skills and interests to include coverage of hard news, and they returned to their former positions with that new knowledge. [6] : 5–6 Many, like Dorothy Jurney, were asked to train their male replacements before being relegated back to the women's section. [4] : 41 Jurney was told by the managing editor that she was not a candidate for city editor because she was a woman. [6] : 5
In the years after World War II, many women's page journalists and editors, many of whom had covered hard news during the war, attempted to change the focus of women's sections to cover substantive, important news of interest to women. [4] : 41 Media scholar Kimberly Wilmot Voss said of this period that women's sections "came into their own." [6] : vii Sections became larger and covered increasingly progressive content, but "the perceptions that the sections were fluff continued for years." [6] : vii
Post-1960, the trend continued and some newspapers' sections were covering stories that weren't being covered in news sections, such as exposés of county foster homes, stories about domestic abuse, [4] : 42 reproductive rights, [6] : 119 and other substantive topics. Marie Anderson of the Miami Herald led her section to discontinue society coverage. Under her leadership the section won so many Penney-Missouri Awards (see below) in the 1960s that the paper was asked to retire from the competition. [6] These trends were pioneered by smaller metropolitan newspapers such as the Herald, the Dallas Times-Herald , and the Detroit Free Press . [4] : 42–43 Many major US papers were slow to follow, [4] : 42–43 including the New York Times , whose women's section was named "Food, Fashion, Furnishings, and Family" until 1971. [7]
In the US, the J. C. Penney-Missouri Awards (often called the Penney-Missouri Awards and later the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards) were the most prestigious awards for women's page writing and editing [6] : 3 and the only nationwide recognition specifically for women's page journalism. [8] The awards were inaugurated in 1960 to recognize women's sections with progressive content [6] : 34 that covered stories other than society, club, and fashion news. They were often described as the Pulitzers of women's page journalism at a time when most women's page coverage wasn't considered for other prestigious journalism awards. [3] : 32 [9]
The awards presentations each year were accompanied by influential workshops that encouraged women's page editors to focus on more substantive, progressive issues. [6] : 34 1966 keynote speaker Marjorie Paxson told attendees, "It's time we started putting some hard news into (our pages.) It's time we accepted the responsibility of making our readers aware." [6] : 119 Because women were not at the time accepted into the Society of Professional Journalists, these workshops represented an important networking opportunity that wasn't otherwise available to women journalists. [6] : 34
Rodger Streitmatter, writing in the scholarly journal Journalism History , credits the awards for helping to change women's pages journalism from the traditional types of coverage to covering more substantive stories. [10]
The second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with newspapers' movements to replace women's pages with features and lifestyles sections. While women's page editors were pushing their management to allow them to cover issues of importance to women, many feminists were criticizing the very idea of "women's" news, arguing that news important to women was news that should be covered in the main section of the newspaper and that segregating women's news to within one section marginalized that news and implicitly indicated the rest of the newspaper was for men. [3] : 11 They believed so-called "women's sections" should be eliminated. [4] : 38
Many women's page editors considered themselves part of or supporters of the women's movement and were proud of their role in covering topics important to women readers. [4] : 41 In many newspapers the only coverage of the women's movement was within the women's section. The 1965 announcement of the formation of the National Organization for Women ran between an article about Saks Fifth Avenue and a recipe for turkey stuffing. [4] : 45
Women's pages of the time were accused of talking down to women. A 1971 Glamour editorial asked, "What has your women's page editor done for you lately?" and said the sections reduced women to traditional roles. [6] : 12
In 1978, sociologist Cynthia Fuchs Epstein argued that news of the women's movement did not belong in the women's section because "just by appearing there, the stories maintain the status quo, for they tell both men and women that news of the women's movement is not of general concern." [4] : 46 That same year Harvey Molotch wrote that news was "essentially men talking to men. The women's pages are a deliberate exception: Here it is the case that women who work for men talk to women. But in terms of the important information...women are not ordinarily present." [4] : 47
According to media scholar Voss, the argument that if women's pages were eliminated, news of importance to women would end up on the front pages turned out to be incorrect, and that instead much of it simply did not appear in the newspapers after the elimination of the women's section. [6] : 163
As late as 1993 media scholar M. Junior Bridge found that the incidence of references to women on the front page of the New York Times had only risen to 13% of names mentioned, up from 5% in 1989. [4] : 49 Times executive editor Max Frankel reacted to the announcement of this study by suggesting more women would appear on the front page if the front page were "covering local teas." [4] : 49
In 1969, The Washington Post under the leadership of Ben Bradlee replaced the women's page,"For and About Women" [6] : 160 with a section called "Style", which was designed to attract a broader audience. [3] : 1 The Los Angeles Times followed suit with "View" the next year [3] : 1 and soon metropolitan newspapers throughout the US stopped publishing explicitly-named women's sections in favor of "lifestyle" sections. [3] : 2 According to Harp, this represented the "birth of the modern-day feature section." [3] : 1 Society news all but disappeared from these sections, and wedding announcements and club news became minor segments of most newspapers.
In many cases the editors who had been managing the women's sections were demoted and male editors installed to manage the new features sections. [4] : 48 This happened twice to Paxson, when two different newspapers eliminated their women's sections, which she had been editing, demoted her, and hired a man as features editor. [4] : 44
In the late 1980s, some newspapers reintroduced sections explicitly designed to attract female readers. [3] : 2 The Chicago Tribune called their section "WomanNews." [3] : 2 As late as 2006 the section was being included within the "Tempo" features section on Wednesdays. [11]
Women's sections, while marginalized by other journalists and by members of the women's movement, made major contributions in their communities. Working with local women's clubs – another group often denigrated [6] : 51 – some women's sections pinpointed community problems and helped develop solutions. [6] : viii–ix Women's sections in some metropolitan areas were instrumental in establishing social programs and libraries. [6] : viii In a 1960s-era speech, Marie Anderson told women's page journalists, "be a motivating source in your community. If your town doesn't do something, call attention to it." [6] : 9 Club editors in many metropolitan areas held workshops to train local club leaders how to create and describe projects that would make their work newsworthy. The journalists encouraged the clubwomen first to tackle newsworthy work, and then to write press releases useful in the selection and development of stories. This work encouraged women's clubs to upgrade their programming, resulting in meaningful work being done by women's clubs which had formerly been primarily social groups. [6] : 51–58
Some women's page editors developed inclusive policies, often before the other sections of the newspaper. The Miami Herald ran a series profiling black residents in 1962, "well before the front pages of the newspaper addressed societal inequities." [6] : 11 Edee Greene of the Fort Lauderdale News rans photos of black brides before it was done at most newspapers. [6] : 11 In 1968 Ebony editor Ponchitta Pierce was invited by Theta Sigma Phi to write a piece for the professional association's publication Matrix on including black women in women's pages. [6] : 14
By the 1960s, many metropolitan women's pages were covering social issues, which weren't typically being covered in news sections. [6] : 3 Women's pages in some newspapers covered domestic violence, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, syphilis, women's prison, prostitution, child molestation, and other issues before their papers' news sections did. [6] : 3, 11
Media scholar Julie Golia concluded that women's page journalism has been "dismissed by contemporaries and scholars as homogenouse drivel" and "long been misunderstood because no one has conducted an in-depth multi-decade analysis of content and evolution. [6] : 20
Voss concluded they helped change the newspaper industry. [6] : 21
Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism has its roots in coverage of horse racing and boxing in the early 1800s, mainly targeted towards elites, and into the 1900s transitioned into an integral part of the news business with newspapers having dedicated sports sections. The increased popularity of sports amongst the middle and lower class led to the more coverage of sports content in publications. The appetite for sports resulted in sports-only media such as Sports Illustrated and ESPN. There are many different forms of sports journalism, ranging from play-by-play and game recaps to analysis and investigative journalism on important developments in the sport. Technology and the internet age has massively changed the sports journalism space as it is struggling with the same problems that the broader category of print journalism is struggling with, mainly not being able to cover costs due to falling subscriptions. New forms of internet blogging and tweeting in the current millennium have pushed the boundaries of sports journalism.
The Miami Herald is an American daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward, and Monroe counties.
The Parthenon is the independent student newspaper of Marshall University based in Huntington, West Virginia. The paper began publication in 1898. It currently is published in print on Tuesdays with content added daily online. It is distributed for "free" on the Huntington and South Charleston campuses. The Parthenon is also published online. Student reporters change every semester and are instructed by the faculty adviser in a beat reporting class within the school of journalism. Editors, staff reporters and other staff change annually or every semester.
The Quad-City Times is a daily morning newspaper based in Davenport, Iowa, and circulated throughout the Quad Cities metropolitan area, including Davenport, Bettendorf and Scott County in Iowa; and Moline, East Moline, Rock Island, and Rock Island County in Illinois.
The Patriot-News is the largest newspaper serving the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area. In 2005, the newspaper was ranked in the top 100 in daily and Sunday circulation in the United States. It has been owned by Advance Publications since 1947.
Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. is an American journalist who was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the Post newsroom for 44 years. His roles at the newspaper included executive editor, managing editor, national editor, London correspondent, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, deputy metropolitan editor, and investigative and local reporter. Downie became executive editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as executive editor, the Washington Post won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper had won during the term of a single executive editor. Downie currently serves as vice president at large at the Washington Post, as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.
The Diamondback is an independent student newspaper associated with the University of Maryland, College Park. It began in 1910 as The Triangle and became known as The Diamondback in 1921. The Diamondback was initially published as a daily print newspaper on weekdays until becoming a weekly online journal in 2013. It is published by Maryland Media, Inc., a non-profit organization. The newspaper receives no university funding and derives its revenue from advertising.
Carol Sutton was an American journalist. She got her journalism degree from the University of Missouri. In 1974 she became the first female managing editor of a major U.S. daily newspaper, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. She was cited as the example of female achievement in journalism when Time named American Women as the 1975 People of the Year. During her tenure at the paper, it was awarded the 1971 Penney-Missouri Award for General Excellence and in 1976 the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for its coverage of school desegregation in Louisville. She is also credited with significantly raising the number of minority reporters on staff.
Women in journalism are individuals who participate in journalism. As journalism became a profession, women were restricted by custom from access to journalism occupations, and faced significant discrimination within the profession. Nevertheless, women operated as editors, reporters, sports analysts and journalists even before the 1890s in some countries as far back as the 18th-century.
In journalism, the society page of a newspaper is largely or entirely devoted to the social and cultural events and gossip of the location covered. Other features that frequently appear on the society page are a calendar of charity events and pictures of locally, nationally and internationally famous people. Society pages expanded to become women's page sections.
Vivian Anderson Castleberry was an American newspaper editor, journalist, and women's rights activist, who was elected to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1984.
Marjorie Irene Evers "Marj" Heyduck (1913–1969) was a reporter, columnist and editor for the Dayton Herald, Dayton Press, Dayton Journal, Dayton Journal-Herald, and Dayton Daily News from 1936 to 1969. She also hosted a radio show from 1939 to 1941.
The Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards were first awarded in 1960 as the Penney-Missouri Awards to recognize women's pages that covered topics other than society, club, and fashion news, and that also covered such topics as lifestyle and consumer affairs. The Penney-Missouri Awards were often described as the "Pulitzer Prize of feature writing". They were the only nationwide recognition specifically for women's page journalists, at a time when few women had other opportunities to write or edit for newspapers. The annual awards appear to have been last given in 2008.
Marie Willard Anderson was a Miami, Florida newspaper editor. Under her leadership in the 1960s the Miami Herald Women's Page transformed into a nationally recognized progressive women's section, one of the first in the country to do so, and won the Penney-Missouri Award four times.
Dorothy Misener Jurney was an American journalist. As women's page editor for the Miami Herald, she shifted the focus of those pages from the "Four F's – family, food, fashion, and furnishings" – to focus on covering women's issues as hard news, and influenced other newspapers to follow suit. The National Press Club Foundation called her "the godmother of women's pages".
Marjorie Paxson was an American newspaper journalist, editor, and publisher during an era in American history when the women's liberation movement was setting milestones by tackling the barriers of discrimination in the media workplace. Paxson graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1944, and began her newspaper career in Nebraska during World War II, covering hard news for wire services. In the 1960s, Paxson worked as assistant editor under Marie Anderson for the women's page of the Miami Herald which, in the 1950s, was considered one of the top women's sections in the United States. From 1963 to 1967, she was president of Theta Sigma Phi, a sorority that evolved into the Association for Women in Communications (AWC). She won the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into its hall of fame. In 1969, she earned a Penney-Missouri award for her work as editor of the women's page in the St. Petersburg Times.
Ruth Ellen (Lovrien) Church was an American food and wine journalist and book author. She spent 38 years as the Chicago Tribune’s food editor and became the first person to write a wine column for a major U.S. paper in 1962, a decade before Frank Prial's column for the New York Times.
Margaret Ann Savoy Pitts Bellows was an American newspaper editor. She was the women's editor for the Phoenix Gazette between 1947 and 1959, and then spent five years at The Arizona Republic. She moved to New York City in 1964 following her third marriage, to fellow journalist Jim Bellows, and wrote for the Associated Press, before joining United Press International to write on its urban beat. After moving to Los Angeles in 1967, she became the women's editor for the Los Angeles Times, writing for Section IV until it was renamed as the View in July 1970, where she profiled women including Joan Didion, Maya Angelou and Nancy Reagan.
Dorothy Roe Lewis was an American newspaper editor and journalist. She was a syndicated columnist and the women's editor for the Associated Press for nineteen years.
Jeanne Voltz was an American food journalist, editor, and cookbook author. She was food editor for the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, two of the most influential food sections in the country during her tenure in the 1950s and 1960s. She won three James Beard awards for her cookbooks.