California State University , Northri dge ) A TUDY OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN JOURNA8 LISM FROM 1696 TO 1972 A thesis submitted in par tial satisfaction o£ the requirements £or the degree o£ Master o£ Arts in Mass Communication by Vicki Lee Brumagin ---- June, 1972 r··---------------------------------------------------- I i The the sis of Vicki Lee Brum�qin UOaooroved: California State University, Northridge June , 1972 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS . ABSTRACT . lV CHAPTER • • • . • • • • ·• • • • I. INTRODUCTION. • 1 . II. PRINTERS ' WIDOWS : 1696-1800 . 7 III. TERlvrA.GANTS AND TEMPTRESSES : 1800-1890 • . 21 Publishers Reporters and Editors Changing Times Magazines Women 1 s Club s War Correspondent s· •• . 81 IV . STUNT WOMEN : 1890-1900 . SOB SISTERS : 1900-1910. 99 v. • . 1 3 VI. SUFFRAGETTES : 1910-1920 . 1 VII. TABLOID HEROINES : 1920-1930 • . 135 . VIII. PROFESSIONAL COMPETITORS : 1930-1960 • . 159 . War Correspondents Publishers IX. BEYOND EQUALITY : 1960-1972 . • • • • • • • • 193 Publishers Magazines Activist Reporting Broadcasting Fore gn Correspondence Washin� gt on Press Corp s CONCLUSION . • . 243 . x. BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • . 249 . iii ABSTRACT A STUDY OF' WOMEN IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM FROM 1 9 1972 6 6 TO by Vicki Lee Brumagin Master o£ Arts in Mass Communication June , 1972 The purpose o£ this thesis was to identify and describe those women who received professional and/or pub - lie recognition as Amer ican journalists from to 1972 . 1696 The focus was on reporters , editors and publishers (excluding for the mo st part columnists, society and women 's page editors ), tracing their careers an d their role within the mainstream of journalistic history in America. Data were gathered £rom a variety o£ sources , in- eluding history texts, contemporary biographies and auto- biographies and, in the main , £rom such trade publications as Editor & Pub lisher , Quill, The Matrix, Journalism Qu arterly, and news magazines , Time and Newsweek . Of particular value was a 1936 text , Ladies o£ the Press : The Hist ory of Women in Journalism By An Insider . iv Written by Ishb el Ross , the volu�eLis the sole definitive book written on the subj ect to date . Over 300 newswomen are identified in this survey , tracing their invo lvement in journalism from colonial days through the nineteenth century , then spotlighting their contributions as "stunt women ," 11 sob sisters" and 11tabloid heroines ," before going on to analyze their role as highly professional competitors within the news media of modern America . The study reveals that. women indeed have played a larger part in American newsgathering than many journalism texts have given them credit for . In addition , certain historical patterns are identified and described under various chapter headings . v - -----------�- :____________ ____ CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Women 's Liberation Movement--born with the decade o£ the 1970's--surprised many Americans into taking a second look at the nation 's female population . At few times in history has the feminine role been so thoroughly scrutinized : Who is the American woman ? •••wh ere has she been and where do es she go from here? One of the places she 's been £or a long time is in the newspaper city room. Though her presence may not al - ways have been conspicuous to readers, the lady journalist has long labored behind the scenes, risking life and limb-- not to mention reputat ion--to provide the public with what it had ria right to know ." Since 1696, when the first colonial printer 's widow decided to carry on her husband 's trade , women have played a part in gathering and reporting the news . Yet, "journalism texts refer to women most o£- 1 ten in footnotes and only briefly in texts, 11 points out Il Marion Marzolf, journalism lecturer at the University o£ Ii Michigan . I L 1 2 Thousands of pages could be devoted to these news- r!wom en , chronicling everything from their dr ess to their .il courage, their individual writing styles to their politi- cal views . However , this study will concern itself pri- mar ily with simp ly identifying chronologically those women who achieved professional and/or public recognition as news reporters or editors in America during the period 1696 to 1972. It will att empt , too , to enlarge upon the little that can be gleaned from the footnotes of tradi - 1I tional texts and, to some extent , to interpret the roles j wh ich these women have played in the history of American ��� journalism. Since the period under investigation spans nearly I three centuries , two factors had to be dealt with at the outset . First, implicit in a survey of this scope is the exclusion of hundreds of women who , regardless of their contr ibutions to the field, did not receive "professional an d/or public recognition" and are therefore lost to record. Second, a decision was made to deliberately omit those women--wi th rare exceptions--who worked solely as columnists, social page, or "women 1 s page" editors and wr iters . Admi t.tedly , these women too have contributed to the nation s news media but for th e p rpos f his_ stu<:Iy , 1 u._ � o. _:t::_ . only those who worked 1n the competitive world of the "hard news" and "feature stories" of the front and near- front pages of American newspapers and magazines were included. Marion Mar zolf 's preliminary biblio graphy , "Women I in American Journalism," provides a useful tool 1n ana- J.yzing the available literature in this field. While the bibl iograp hy is by no means complete, it suggests some of the difficulties implicit in a survey of this type; specifically it points up the dearth of detail available on the vast majority of journalists in general.• Professor Marzolf lists 256 sources; of these, mo re than one-third are concerned solely with a handful of the few "well-knowns" in the field: Nellie Bly (6), Dorothy Dix (4), Mary Baker Eddy (4), Margaret Fuller (9), Marguerite Higgins (5), Sara Josepha Hale (6), Clare Booth Lu ce ( 3), El eanor "Cissy" Patterson ( 3) , Anne Royall ( 4) , Agnes Smedl ey ( 6), Gloria Steinem (3), Anna Louise Strong (12), Ida Tarbe l (4) , Dorothy Thompson (3) and Margaret f Bourke-White (9) . Of the remainder , another third also deal exclusively with individual personalities . The �ingle history of women in American journalism to dat e was written by Ishbel Ross in 1936. Entitled "Ladies of the Press : Th e Story of Women in Journalism By An Insider ," the volume 1s a masterful coll ection of anec­ dotes and a rich vein of informat ion about S. newswomen u. throu gh the early 193 0's. Miss Ross assemb led her mate­ rial s primarily throu gh personal acquaintance and corres­ pondence, thus the book gives heavy emphasis to East Coast news personalities active during the period 1900 to 1930. Research for this study was initiat ed by reviewing ·h istorical literature and trade publications to discover , insofar as this is possible, the names of those women who were working journalists during the study period. Besides those books listed in the bibliography, the following references were invaluable in "uncovering" possible candidates for this survey : Atlantic Monthly , . ··collier 's, Editor and Publisher , Harper's Magazine, Journalism Quarterly, Th e Matrix , McClure's Magazine , Newsweek, Saturday Evening Post, Time and microfilmed back issues of the New York Herald, Journal , Times, Tribune and World. Once this list of individuals was compiled, the career of each was traced exhaustively (frequently the biographies of male contemporaries yielded important clues ·to the women 's car eers ). Finally the material was or- . ganized historically in an effort to place these newswomen 5 r- 1 and thc1.r. activit ies into greater perspective . Wherever 1 poss ible, an alogies are drawn between women of different }l 1I eras . ( FOOTNOTES FOR CHAPTER I 1 11Women in American Journali sm: A Prel iminary Bibliography" compiled and mimeographed Winter 1971 , I ( ) p. 2. I! I I CHAPTER II PRINTERS' WIDOWS : 1696 -1800 " The first daily newspaper printed in English , the 1 Daily Courant , app eared in London on March 11, 1702 . Very little, except for a name on the sheet 's masthead and a signature affixed beneath the opening announcement , lS known about the paper 's pioneerin g publisher . Still, the name alone--Eli zabeth Mal let--gives English-speaking news­ paper women everywhere a starting point from which to trace their role in journalistic history . The Daily Courant , printed on one side of a single sheet , was , according to its publ isher , "confin 'd to hal£ the Compass, to save the Pub lick at least hal£ the Imper - 2 ti.nences , of ordinary Newspapers." Though its publisher gu ided the infant paper just two weeks before handing it over to the excellent care of Samuel Buckley , she offered two policy statements to guide her successor: First, "at the beginning of each Article he will quote the Foreign.Paper from whence 'tis taken , that the Publick, seeing from what Country a piece of News comes with the Allowance of that Government , may be better 7 to Judge the Credibility and Fairness of the l�ela- ;d> te tion," and, second, nNpr will he take upon him to give any Comments or Conjectures of his own , but will relate on ly Matter of Fact ; supposing other People to have Sens e 3 enough to make Reflections for themselves ." The circumstances of Elizabeth Mallet 's propri- etorship of the Daily Courant are not known , however , if. the experience of her Am erican contemporaries is any in- Jication, it might be £air to assume that she was the widow or daughter of an Eng lish printer . The history of the newspaper, thus of journalism itself, is inextricably bound in America and elsewhere with the development of printing .