Happy Anniversary!

Today Lance & I have been married for nine years - which means we have been researching women's page editors for about the same amount of time. We have spent countless hours going through archives and writing about the women whose stories we feel lucky to document. Together, we spent several days at the home of Curtis and Vivian Castleberry in Dallas. We got to interview the daughter of Ruthe Deskin.

In 2008, Lance gave a great talk about our work together: “Tales of an Accidental Journalism Historian: What Four Archives in Four Months Taught a College Media Adviser About Pre-Women's Liberation Newsrooms." Here is a link to the speech.

Happy anniversary to Lance!

Florida Field to Feast Cookbook

Lance got me the cookbook, Field to Feast for Christmas. It is co-authored by Orlando Sentinel food editor Heather McPherson.

On the back of the book is a reference to Jeanne Voltz's Florida Cookbook. Jeanne was the food editor in the women's pages of the Miami Herald in the 1950s and the food editor in the women's pages of the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s. Here is my article about Jeanne.

This was my first dish from the cookbook - Strawberry Pie. Tonight I am trying the recipe for Baked Penne with Four Cheeses.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Curtis James, Paul Jacob, Lance & I!

Curtis is named for Curtis Castleberry, the husband of legendary Dallas women's page editor Vivian Castleberry and James Bellows, husband of groundbreaking women's page editor Maggie Savoy. Paul is named for Paul Myhre - a champion for women's page journalism as the director of the Penney-Missouri Awards.

Wearing Pants: Fashion & Feminism

The New York Times published a story this week about women wearing pants as a protest to women's roles in the Mormon Church. According to the article:

“Wear Pants to Church,” an event on Sunday, was meant to draw attention to the role of women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, using attire as a symbolic first salvo in a larger struggle over gender inequalities.

Though the Mormon Church has no official policy against women wearing pants to church, many say they feel peer pressure to wear a dress, particularly in the Western United States, organizers said."

This is not a new idea. Fort Lauderdale women's page editor Edee Greene wore pants to work as a silent protest on Women's Strike for Equality Day - August 26, 1970. I learned this in a letter from Greene to Paul Myhre, director of the Penney-Missouri Awards. It is located in the Papers of the Penney-Missouri Awards.

I published an article two years ago about how the New York Times covered the topic of women wearing pants. Here is the citation. It is part of my ongoing work on fashion and feminism.

Anniversary of Maggie Savoy's Death

It was on this date in 1970 that women's page editor Maggie Savoy died of cancer at age 50. Here is her final column.

She was a groundbreaking women's page editor in Arizona & California. She was an outspoken feminist and the wife of legendary editor Jim Bellows.

Here is a link to my article about Maggie Savoy.

I have always felt a special connection to Maggie as she died a few days before I was born. I am lucky to enjoy the rights that she fought for.

Pinterest and Recipe Sharing

Today, the food section of The New York Times repinned my photo of the Beachy Christmas Cookies I made this year. (The sand in the photo is crushed graham crackers.) It is just one more example of how the food sections of newspapers have long had a social media voice that connects reporters and readers.

It is common for newspapers to have Christmas cookie competitions or other best recipe contests. For many years in the 1940s, Chicago Tribune food editor Ruth Ellen Church (who wrote under the pen name Mary Meade) had a weekly recipe contest.

Milwaukee Press Club & Carol Matusin

I week or so ago I received an email from journalist Carol Matusin. She was a reporter in Milwaukee when the Press Club began to accept women as members. She noted that the Milwaukee Press Club misspelled her name on the list of new female members. That list was included in the article that Lance & I wrote about the integration of the Press Club. The above letter can be found in the Special Collections at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Milwaukee Journal women's pages editors who became initial members included Lois Hagen and Peggy Daum.

Cecily Brownstone & James Beard

I was thrilled to get this Rolodex image in an email from Cecily Brownstone's nephew. Cecily was the longtime food editor at the Associated Press. She was a good friend of celebrity chef James Beard. I presented a paper about Cecily at the National Communication Association conference last month.

Day Five of Favorite Fashion Editors: Marji Kunz

Another fashion editor who I am interested in learning more about is Marji Kunz of Detroit - she worked for both newspapers in the city. The Detroit Free Press includes her in an article about the newspaper's history: "Marji Kunz -- fashion writer who often surprised readers and made the fashion makeover popular -- once attended a formal affair in an elegant nightgown to prove a point."

She is described this way by the API's Carol Ann Riordan: "Marji Kunz, a fashion writer for The Detroit Free Press, inspired me when I was growing up. She didn’t cover her beat like every other fashion writer: getting swept away by clothing that only Size “0” models could wear or turning fashion designers into cult figures.
Marji’s value to readers was covering fashion from a consumer’s point of view – real women, real men, who wanted to look their best without spending a small fortune. For her, fashion spoke volumes about our society, how we perceive ourselves and what we value."

Wayne State University gives out a scholarship in her name for students majoring in fashion.

I just ordered copies of information about Marji that can be found in the Penney-Missouri Awards at the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Day Four of Favorite Fashion Editors: Marian Christy

One of the most significant fashion reporters of the 1960s and early 1970s was Marian Christy. She started at the Boston Globe in April 1965 and her work was later picked up by the syndicate U.P.I. Her columns then ran in 104 different newspapers. She won Penney-Missouri Awards in 1966, 1968 and 1970. That is Christy sitting in the chair below at a Penney-Missouri Award ceremony. Bobbi McCallum is the Seattle women's page journalist standing in the lace pantsuit.

Christy took a progressive, sociological approach to fashion - rather than writing for advertisers.

For example, she described the see-through blouse from a late-1960s Saint Laurent fashion show: "Haute couture is a laboratory for new ideas. Saint Laurent was not advocating public near-nudity. It was poetic exaggeration to shock the eyes. Once you see the extreme overstatements, watered-down versions seem reasonable and palatable. This was the late sixties and Saint Laurent seemed to be suggesting that women's bodied should be unharnessed."

In 1979, she was basically forced out of fashion reporting because of complaints from two Boston fashion retailers. They wanted her to promote what was in the department stores that was really more about advertising. She was called into her editor's office and told she had a choice. She could begin pandering to the stores or not be a fashion reporter anymore. She left her beat to focus on interviews with celebrities instead. That story is in her book, Invasions of Privacy

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Day Three of Favorite Newspaper Fashion Editors: Eleni Epstein

Eleni Epstein was the fashion editor of the Washington Star for more than three decades. She was a native of Washington, D.C. who attended George Washington University and Columbia University. During World War II she began her journalism career as a copy assistant at the Washington Star and was promoted to the position of fashion editor at age 21. Her internationally syndicated articles covered the fashion markets of Milan, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo and London. Her position as fashion editor lasted more than 35 years until 1981 when the Star ceased publication. She received many awards for her interpretive writing and her contributions to the fashion industry. In 1960 she was the recipient of the first Penney-Missouri fashion writing award. She was married to Star editor Sid Epstein.

Her papers are at the Missouri Historical Society in the National Women and Media Collection. It includes great photos and some audio interviews. One of the interview is available here.

My article about Eleni will be coming out in a history journal next year.

Day Two of Favorite Newspaper Fashion Editors: Judy Lunn

Judy Lunn was the fashion editor of the Houston Post - one of the four "fs" of the women's pages. Fashion was part of her family’s history. Her grandfather was a furrier. Her aunt was a lingerie designer who created a trousseau for Elizabeth Taylor when she married Eddie Fisher and a maternity gown for Lucille Ball.

Lunn won her first writing award at age nine for a story on fire prevention. And while she had a knack for writing, it was fashion that caught her interest. She graduated a year early from Hunter High School in New York City. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design to study fashion design. (She liked to draw and design but hated to sew.) In college she met her husband, Robert, who was a student at Brown University.

They relocated to Houston in 1968 and she took time off to be a stay-at-home mother for her two daughters, Linda and Susan. It was her daughter, Linda, who led to the post of fashion writer. In hopes of earning some change, she knocked on a neighbor’s door with an offer to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for a quarter. That neighbor was the fashion editor of the Houston Post, Lynn Van Deusen. She asked to meet the mother of the precocious child and her fashion journalism began in 1971. Lunn developed the Fashion Today section for the Post and won many national fashion prizes with that section, including a Penney-Missouri Award.

Day One of Favorite Newspaper Fashion Editors: Aileen Ryan

This week I will be blogging about my favorite newspaper fashion editors - beginning with the Milwaukee Journal's Aileen Ryan - a three-time Penney-Missouri Award winner.

During her first summer of work in 1921, Ryan attended a meeting to hear Milwaukee Journal Editor Marvin Creager say he was happy to have females on the staff because “women have cleaned up newspaper offices.” Ryan later recalled the statement made her feel as though she had been hired to use a mop.

Ryan started under the editorship of women’s page journalist Elizabeth B. Moffet. Moffett had been recruited from the Kansas City Star, where she had pioneered a new method of covering fashion that went beyond simply promoting the clothing of the advertisers. Moffet was hired because the Milwaukee Journal publisher wanted to “handle fashion news with more objectivity.” Moffett would visit the local fashion houses and bring along an artist to sketch the clothing. She would then give a critical analysis of the styles.

During her first trip to New York, the fashion capital of the country, she made fashion journalism history. It was 1931 and at that point, only magazine reporters and buyers were allowed into the fashion shows. Ryan would not accept that policy. She knocked on as many as 12 showroom doors a day and got access to about a third of them. She recounts that no one had heard of the Milwaukee newspaper, but she eventually prevailed and sent clips of her stories to those New York designers. Ryan said that eventually “the New Yorkers began to understand the value of what I was doing.”

Ryan continued to fight for more access each year, and she slowly was able to get access for her photographer, too. This meant other newspapers had to buy their fashion photographs from the Milwaukee Journal. In 1937, images from Ryan’s trips to the fashion shows in Europe became the first color photos in the Journal.

During Ryan’s reign, Wisconsin played an important role in the fashion world: Milwaukee was a major textile-manufacturing center in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1963, Ryan convinced the Milwaukee-area apparel and textile makers to unveil their products in Milwaukee before the New York shows. As part of that drive, she helped to establish the Heritage Milwaukee event to promote local companies such as the Junior House (now J.H. Collectibles) and the Great Lakes Mink Association. The showings at the event attracted newspapers from across the country, including the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. As many of two dozen fashion editors would make the trip to Milwaukee for the event – putting the city on the fashion map.

According to the late Milwaukee public relations executive Lyn Skeen, Milwaukee’s fashion industry was larger than its brewing industry at the time: “Fashion was big business in our state.” And a 1969 article in the New York Times, noted that Wisconsin ranked fourth nationally as a producer of women’s fashion apparel, behind California, New York and Texas.

Pearl Harbor & Women's Page Editor Drue Lytle

Today is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Hugh Lytle was the journalist whose teletype message provided Associated Press and the world with the first account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was married to award-winning Hawaii women's page editor Drue Lytle.

Here is Hugh's obituary. Drue is mentioned in it.





I have been collecting data about Drue for the past few years. The last few months have been especially fruitful. I found the above clip which answered many questions and I also located some great letters at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection.

I heard from one of Drue's relatives a few months ago and plan to follow up.

In Memory of Fashion Journalist Barbara Cloud

I was sad to learn that longtime Pittsburgh fashion editor Barbara Cloud has died. Here is her obituary:
"Her crisp, vibrant writing matched her fashion sense, said John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Post-Gazette.

"She was one of the most gifted newspaper writers that I think I've known over many years. She was of the older school of journalism, characterized by the clarity of how they wrote," he said."

I had conducted several email interviews with Barbara and her opinions on designers, department stores and fashion journalism. I am completing an article about Barbara for a history journal.

I was so sad to learn of her death.