Culinary Historians Present "The Old Girl Network"

I was excited to see this upcoming talk by the Culinary Historians of Southern California: ""The Old Girl Network: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women."

This is the lead to the blog post about the talk: "Bra burning, Rosie the Riveter, even the Pill: all these are symbols that come to mind when we think of women's lib. But cookbooks? We didn't realize they were on the list. However an upcoming event hosted by the Culinary Historians of Southern California will change all that."

As the Culinary Historians further explain it, "These cookbooks demonstrate how women worked together to help themselves, other women and the outside world. They championed many causes: suffrage, education, temperance, prohibition, equal rights, working conditions, welfare, immigration and legal rights and responsibilities. Along the way, the recipes and how-to advice in the books offer a compelling glimpse into America's cooking habits and its region-by-region culinary heritage."

This is similar to the work I have done on the food sections of women's pages. I hope the talk is taped.

Marian Christy and fashion reporting

I have been reading this book, Invasions of Privacy: Notes From A Celebrity Journalist by Marian Christy. Before Christy became a celebrity journalist, she was a fashion reporter at the Boston Globe. In that position, she won three Penney-Missouri Awards for fashion writing - in 1966, 1968 and 1970. This is how she described going to the Award ceremony: "The late Professor Paul Myhre told me that I had set new standards of fashion journalism by making daring and dazzling comments on social pretentions and he said, 'trailed fashion first behind me like gold confetti.' It was heady stuff."

Her book also explained more about fashion reporting in the 1960s and 1970s that will be helpful in later work on fashion in the women's pages.

Fort Lauderdale turns 100

Yesterday, USA Today featured a story about Fort Lauderdale turning 100 this year. We will be traveling there in April for a history conference.

For many years, the city's main newspaper was the Fort Lauderdale News. In the 1960s, its women's page editor was the wonderful Edee Greene. She won numerous Penney-Missouri Awards for her progressive section and was a founding member of the city's domestic violence shelter.

She was also quite funny. She wrote a humor column and her letters are witty. (Her letters can be found in the Penney-Missouri papers at the University of Missouri.)

Women's Page Editor Jane Clark

Yesterday, I came across the obituary of Jane Clark who was a St. Louis women's page editor. According to her obit:

"She joined the staff of the Globe-Democrat as a feature writer in 1959 and later that year was named women’s editor for that St. Louis newspaper. Her responsibilities included the development of a women’s section for both the daily and weekend editions as well as supervising coverage of semiannual fashion shows, the annual Women of Achievement Award Luncheon and other special
events and topics of interest to women.

During that time, she won numerous awards from state and national organizations for her feature-writing.

She was named an instructor in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in 1967 and in 1969 received a master’s degree in that program."

The United States of Arugula

I have been reading the book, The United States of Arugula, which is about the Food Revolution. Chapter three of this book, The Food Establishment, Part I, addresses the usual suspects in food history - James Beard, Craig Claiborne and Julia Child. Yet, it also includes names that are often forgotten in the story of food journalism: Jane Nickerson, who was the food editor prior to Caliborne at the New York Times, and Cecily Brownstone of the Associated Press.

This information will be a great addition to my work on food journalism in the women's pages of newspapers.

Icons of American Cooking book chapter

My book chapter (along with Victor W. Geraci) in the Icons of American Cooking has been published. I just received it in the mail. In the chapter about James Beard, I included an article that Los Angeles Times food editor Jeanne Voltz wrote about the food great. I am revising an article about Voltz and her influence in the food journalism in the women's pages.

Newsweek 1960: Working mothers?

The current issue of Newsweek features this March 1960 cover asking about the role of educated mothers and their place n society. This was published three years before Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique asked that question.

It is yet another example of how numerous elements that were taking place in the 1960s in terms of creating a foundation for the women's liberation movement.

It is worth noting that several women's pages editors and journalists were mothers who experienced the difficulties of raising children while working outside the home. Some examples are: Eleanor Hart and Jeanne Voltz at the Miami Herald, Lois Hagen and Constance Daniell at the Milwaukee Journal, Vivian Castleberry at the Dallas Times Herald and Maggie Savoy at the Arizona Republic.

Marjorie Paxson & Three Mile Island

The coverage of the potential nuclear disaster in Japan reminded me of Marjorie Paxson's coverage of Three Mile Island. A longtime women's page editor, Paxson became the fourth female publisher of a Gannett newspaper. She became the publisher of the Public Opinion. This is her memory of covering Three Mile Island:

"Chambersburg is about fifty-five miles south of Harrisburg. And of course, Three Mile Island nuclear plant is just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We found out about it the morning of March 28, 1979. Of course, it moved on the wires and the managing editor — who was a woman, by the way — was in to see me immediately with this. And as we began to find out more about it, I spent a great deal more time in the news room. Now, as I say, we were close to it. We were south of there. The prevailing winds blew from out of the south to the north so that any radiation or pollution contamination would have been blown away from us. So we were not concerned about that.

But it soon became evident that a lot of people in the Harrisburg area were very frightened and they had packed up their families and jumped in their cars and headed south, headed away from it. All of our motels were full. There were three or four and every one of them was full. Some families had relatives who suddenly had come down from the Harrisburg area to stay with them. My big concern was that while we had to tell the story of what had happened about this leak in radiation, we had to be very responsible in the way we told it and we couldn't write a headline that scared anybody. And that's what we tried to do. Of course, it went on for several days.

We got one call one time from a motel owner begging me to send a reporter out to talk to the people at his motel because they were so frightened. And I had to explain to him that our reporters there in Chambersburg didn't know any more about it than the people in his motel. All they knew was what was coming over the wire services, what was on TV — and they could watch TV as well as we could. But for several days, it was a very scary situation because people were just so nervous and so upset.

Gannett has a monthly competition among its newspapers. And for that month — or the month of April, whatever — they specified that they wanted to see everybody's coverage of Three Mile Island. So we sent several days' pages in, everything that we had done on it, and everybody else did. In that competition we came in second. We were the closest Gannett paper to Three Mile Island. We came in second.

The winner was the paper in Bellingham, Washington. The judge said that it was really a toss-up but he chose the Bellingham paper because he liked their headline. And their headline read, "Nuke Plant Spits Hot Steam." Now, you can imagine what would have happened in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, if we had run that kind of a headline instead of a very low-key "Nuclear Plant Accident" kind of a headline. That's what I'm talking about with the crisis and the responsibility. And I complained to Gannett headquarters about that one, that part of being a publisher and editor was understanding what a headline in that kind of situation might do to the town. I felt like we should have won first place."

White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health

A pivotal moment in food journalism occurred with the 1969 with the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health. According to a government report: “Several landmark policy efforts with profound and lasting effects emerged from this conference, including expansions of the food stamp program, food labeling, and the school lunch program.”

The conference ultimately issued an official report. In 1988, Milwaukee Journal food editor Peggy Daum wrote of that meeting: “The ripple effect of that meeting is still being felt today. It has been referred to as the Vatican II of the food world.”

There was another meeting in 2000.

Craig Claiborne, Elizabeth Hawkins and Jane Nickerson

I have been looking at the history of food journalism, focusing on the real role that the NYT writer Craig Claiborne played. He has been given more credit than he truly deserves. He was hired by Elizabeth Penrose Hawkins. In her obit above, it is noted that one of her proudest moments was hiring Claiborne – putting a man in charge of what had been traditionally a women’s position. (He took over for Jane Nickerson – who clearly took a news approach to food.)
Yet, for all his influence – he did not, at least initially, see food as news. In his memoir, this is how he describes his job interview with the Times.

Editor Turner Catledge: “If you joined the Times would you consider the food column as a service column or a news column?”

Claiborne: “A service column. There’s very little news of food that is all that interesting. Recipes, are.”

Catledge: “I don’t agree with you.”

Claiborne did develop a news style but Nickerson was truly the one who laid the groundwork.

The King's Speech and Joan Younger Dickinson

Lance and I went to see the movie, The King's Speech today. (We liked it.)

In the movie, King George VI becomes the head of England after his brother leaves the throne to marry Wallace Simpson - shown above from the movie. In the post-World War II years, they went to the Bahamas, where the Duke became governor.

Above is a photo of women's page and women's magazine writer Joan Younger Dickinson interviewing the real Wallace Simpson - who by that time was the Duchess of Windsor - in the Bahamas. (The image is at the University of Wyoming.) I am revising my article about Joan Younger Dickinson for a revise-and-resubmit.

Best Milwaukee Cooks

I am working on an article about Milwaukee Journal food editor Peggy Daum and have been going through the cookbook that she edited, The Best Cook on the Block Cookbook. It was a result of a feature that began in October 1977 where readers would nominate someone they considered the best cook in their neighborhood.

In the introduction, Daum wrote: "In a city where family ties are still strong and three or four generations still live in the same neighborhood , this means holiday feasts for relatives, Sunday dinners for family, Saturday night suppers for friends." (2)

What I found interesting in the book was how many men were featured as cooks. For example, Alex J. Linder contributed Kluski with Pork or Potato Dumplings with Pork. Daum wrote of Linder: "From a family of seven boys, Linder got interested in cooking when he helped his mother in the kitchen. Now retired, he does all the cooking at home." (66)

Another example was Tom Radoszewski who contributed Polska Kielbasa or Polish Sausage. Daum wrote of Radoszewski: "As a boy, Radoszewski watched his grandfather make sausage. Later, he evolved his own recipe from his father's recipe. A Milwaukee cookbook couldn't be complete without such a recipe."

Clearly, men were beginning to take on a bigger role in the kitchen compared to past generations.

Craig Claiborne and the (Supposed) Invention of Food Journalism

The sixth track of this video from the New School addresses the role of food journalism and the women's pages. While Craig Claiborne certainly had a significant role, giving him such credit for the "invention of food journalism" devalues the work of the women who came before him.

Food writer Betty Fussell noted that Claiborne became in 1957: “the first male food editor in a journalistic world dominated by women.” Yet, in 1950, the industry publication Editor & Publisher reported that the number of newspaper food editors had grown from 240 to 561 in one year. While most of these sections appear to have run in the women’s pages only men were quoted in the article. It was noted that the Associated Press had assigned a man, Jack Ryan, to cover the subject. More work needs to be done in this area to understand the role of gender and food reporting in the 1950s and 1960s.

Milwaukee, television and food

I have been reading this book about the history of Milwaukee (my hometown) television. It features a page on Breta Griem. She was a home economist who had a cooking show on WTMJ-TV and wrote about food for the women's pages of the Milwaukee Journal in the 1940s and 1950s.

Griem's WTMJ show was called "What's New in the Kitchen" and was part of a block of daytime shows that were aimed at women and children beginning in 1949. Her show lasted 13 years and led to numerous awards.

Here is a passage (pg 60) about Griem's unscripted, live show:
"I remember we had a kitchen program - as almost every early television station did, I guess, and the kitchen was not a fully-equipped kitchen. We had an arrangement of rolling platforms on which to put the essentials of a set for a given show. When we didn't need it, we rolled it into the corner of a studio and brought in something else.

As a result, the sink was not equipped with running water. There were pans of water underneath the counter. And Breta Griem, who was a fabulous character, was doing her kitchen show one day and she got a frog in her throat.

She just reached underneath for a glass of water, and realized that it was the soapy dishwater that she had washed the dishes in. But nobody knew that until after the program. She didn't grimace or make any face."

While Julia Child has received so much attention for her cooking show - many local television stations included cooking and home economics programs aimed at women.

Reference to Jeanne Voltz

I came across this interesting blog post about women's page food editor Jeanne Voltz. The blogger wrote:
"I first became aware of Jeanne Voltz when she was a food editor of the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s, when we first moved to California. The food section of the Los Angeles Times was, in my estimation, unequaled in the 1960s-1970s. (I’ve been vocal in my disappointment with the current food sections of the two local newspapers, today. They’ve gone way too high brow for my taste. I find a lot more interesting recipes to clip from the food sections that my penpals send to me from various other parts of the country)."

She went on to write an interesting analysis of Voltz's cookbooks. It's an interesting food blog.

I am revising my article about Jeanne for a journalism history journal.

1970 White House Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities

Here is a story about the White House marking Women's History Month with a 50-year progress report. According to stories, this was the "first comprehensive federal report on the status of women' since 1963." The reporting in this story is incorrect. The White House Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities also issued a report in 1970.

According to the Nixon Library:
"In January 1969, Richard Nixon took the oath of office as President. At one of President Nixon’s early press conferences, Ms. Vera Glaser stood amid a forest of male colleagues, raised her strong, clear voice, and asked:

“Mr. President, since you’ve been inaugurated, you have made approximately 200 presidential appointments, and only three of them have gone to women. Can we expect some more equitable recognition of women’s abilities, or are we going to remain the lost sex?”

The President seemed surprised, but he agreed

: “We’ll have to do something about that.” It was a promise he kept.

President Nixon’s pledge to Ms. Glaser triggered a chain of events that led to the appointment of a White House Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities. Virginia Allan, a well-known Republican businesswoman, chaired it, and Vera Glaser was among its members."

Vera Glaser was a longtime political columnist whose work appeared in the women's section. What is also interesting about the 1970 task force is that the White House initially refused to release it. SO, Glaser snuck a copy to Miami Herald women's page editor Marie Anderson who published it in her section. Here is more about Glaser.

Feminism and Vivian Castleberry

Of all the women's editors I have studied, the most outspoken feminist was Vivian Castleberry. She said recently: “I entered the feminist movement before there was a feminist movement. I pushed, prodded and prevailed in moving what was a traditional women’s section to become a bellwether for the reporting of issues significant to women and the family – abortion, child abuse, custody, women and legal concerns, family and spousal abuse, violence and on and on.”

The Guardian's Women's Page

The British newspaper The Guardian continues to have a women's page. Here is an interesting 50-year retrospective.

The Guardian's women's page has long embraced feminism. This is a 2007 headline: "Why does the Guardian still need a women's page? Because the feminist revolution is only half made."

Here is more from the column, by Polly Toynbee, describing the women's page content in the 1960s and 1970s:

"The section raised all the difficult issues - battered wives, the menopause, women prisoners giving birth while chained down. It asked why girls were put in pink, what's hard-wired and what's not, why sex was often rubbish for women, why men were often rubbish but women had no means of escape. Why should women always do the housework and why shouldn't they do anything a man could do? Back before the Equal Pay Act in 1970, the unions insisted on lower rates of pay for women doing the same job as men in the same factory. Back before the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975, all kinds of jobs were forbidden to women.

It's hard to recapture the shock and fury that feminism caused but, never forget, these were, and still are, revolutionary ideas. The very notion that women, that mothers, can be equal in everything reaches down into the heart of family life and questions everything. And there is no denying that feminism caused a soaring divorce rate and an explosion of single motherhood. Women walked away from bad men. Bad said: "If you want equality, then I can abandon my family responsibilities and pay no maintenance." So it is still an unfinished revolution, where women's attitudes changed fast, but men's only slightly, and society has done too little to accommodate this great eruption. The economic system still demands a male wage to bring up a child - jobs aren't flexible enough and women's pay is too low for mothers alone to be breadwinners."