Jeanne Voltz Edits

I spent yesterday going through the minor revisions for my article about Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times food editor Jeanne Voltz. I went through her cookbook looking for details about her personal life and for examples of cultural anthropology. Below is a stack of her cookbooks. I am missing three of her books.



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Jeanne Voltz Article Accepted for Publication

My article about Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times food editor Jeanne Voltz has been accepted for publication. It should run in the Spring 2012 issue of American Journalism. I am working on the final minor revisions right now.



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Miami News' Billie (Womack) O'Day Images

In going through my files I came across these great images of Billie O'Day, women's page editor of the Miami News in the 1960s. (Her real last name was Womack but she used the pen name Billie O'Day in both her byline and her professional life at this time.)

In the top photo, Billie is in the coat on the far left as she won a Penney-Missouri Award for top women's page in her circulation size.

The second photo is from a Columbia, Missouri hotel room. Billie is giving a thumbs-up and that is Miami Herald women's page editor Marie Anderson nearest the camera. I love the smoke and the liquor bottles as these otherwise serious journalists are enjoying time together.

The women's page community was a strong one in the 1950s and the 1960s, especially the women in Florida.

Pioneering Journalist Jean Otto Dies

I recently learned that Milwaukee Journal reporter and editorial writer Jean Otto died. Here is her obituary.

She started in the women's pages of the Journal in 1968 and four years later, she became the first woman to serve as an editorial writer with The Milwaukee Journal. And one of the few women in that position in the country. She was later named editor of the newspaper's expanding Op-Ed page.

In 1979, she became the first female president of the Society for Professional Journalists.

She wrote a book about her life: First Love: Memoirs of a First Amendment Freedom Fighter.

Beverley Morales Presentation

I will be presenting the paper "Pioneering Journalist Beverley Morales: Redefining Women’s Page Content in 1960s Florida," at the Florida Conference of Historians next Spring in Lake City, Florida.

Beverley Brink Morales (pictured above) was a ground-breaking journalist who spent much of the 1960s in South Florida. It was a significant time for women’s page editors as women’s news was being redefined as a mix of traditional and progressive content. Florida was a significant place for women’s page journalists as they won a majority of Penney-Missouri Awards – the top recognition for women’s pages – throughout the 1960s. Morales won a prize in the first year of the Awards for the women’s section that she had helped create at the upstart Sun Sentinel newspaper. Her career also included becoming a successful grant writer in the years after the women’s pages disappeared. This paper is a description of Morales’ Florida career and how she re-invented herself after the end of the women’s pages in the early 1970s.

It is the story of a previously unknown Florida journalist who helped redefine the concept of women’s news in her state and the industry. It also addresses challenge that women’s page journalists faced as their sections were eliminated. The scholarship adds to the limited literature on women’s page journalists. Material for the paper comes from the papers of the Penney-Missouri Awards at the Missouri Historical Society and interviews with Morales’ sisters.

Bringing Back Home Ec

Last week, the NY Times ran an editorial about reintroducing home ec as a way to fight obesity. Here is a link to the story.


As I have written: For too long, women’s pages, which included food, have been looked at as sections that simply reinforced a traditional role for women. This was once how home economics was viewed, too. It was simply a place that reinforced women’s traditional roles. As one home economics scholar wrote, “Home economics has not fared well at the hands of historians. Until recently women’s historians largely dismissed home economics as little more than a conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen.” In recent years, historians have re-evaluated the value of home economics and in doing so, raised the status of the field. It is time to do the same for food sections.

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Debating David Kamp's Version of Food History

As I re-read David Kamp's book, The United States of Arugula, I am again surprised by The lack if women's roles, outside of a handful of names. Like other food historians, he minimizes the role of NY Times food editor Jane Nickerson. He writes of the food editor who followed Nickerson, "Claiborne treated food as a journalistic beat, a daily responsibility to sniff out what was going on in America's more creative kitchens." (p. 70)

I have many examples that Nickerson was already doing that prior to Claiborne. After all, her column was called, "News of Food."




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More Jane Nickerson Article Analysis

I am going over my clips from Jane Nickerson's work at the New York Times and have found clear evidence of her "food as news" work. (This goes counter to the credit that too many historians give later NYT food editor Craig Claiborne.)

Take for example, the above article from August 14, 1946. In it, Nickerson writes: "Potatoes have been pressed into service as a substitute so that more grain and flour can be sent to starving people." She goes on to give several sample recipes using potatoes.