Newspapers Transition From Women's to Style Pages:
What were they thinking?






Dustin Harp
Assistant Professor






School of Journalism
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station A.1000
Austin, TX 78712-0113


E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 512.471-6720
Fax: 512.471.7979









A paper submission to the Commission on the Status of Women of the
Association of Journalism and Mass Communication for presentation at the
2003 Annual Meeting.


ABSTRACT


Newspapers Transition From Women's to Style Pages:
What were they thinking?



This research considers newspaper trade articles during the 1970s to
determine how industry insiders viewed the termination of women's pages and
introduction of style sections. Women who constructed these sections
dominated the discourse, which focused on a section's content rather than
the name above that content. The discourse also indicates that newsroom
constraints, and male editors, prevented women editors of these
women's/style sections from constructing the content they desired.
 Newspapers Transition From Women's to Style Pages: What were they thinking?
9





Newspapers Transition From Women's to Style Pages:
What were they thinking?

Newspapers in the United States first began courting women with a section
of their own in the 1890s. [1]  Not only were these women's pages
designated for a female audience, the titles of these sections explicitly
named women as their readers. The publishers and editors of newspapers
wanted readers to understand without a doubt that the content had been
constructed for a female audience. These women's sections contained content
typically understood to fall within a feminine sphere of private life and
in opposition to a public sphere dominated by men. But unlike most of the
newspaper's pages, women edited and reported the content in these sections.
For nearly a century these pages and sections devoted entirely to women
appeared in newspapers across the country, marked with women's page or
"family" titles to clearly indicate the targeted audience. Then in January
1969, the Washington Post quit publishing women's pages and replaced them
with a non-gender specific section titled "Style." In July 1970, the Los
Angeles Times moved in the same direction and debuted "View." The time has
been noted as marking the birth of modern-day feature sections. Soon
newspapers across the country followed suit and stopped providing women
readers with a section of their own – though many argue the transition
simply resulted in a name change and not an adjustment in how newspaper
editors constructed women readers. The newly designed pages became known
primarily as "Style" or "Lifestyle" sections and were designed to carry
content meant for a general, non-gender specific audience. The conversion,
editors claimed, was meant to attract diversified audiences into the world
of light, less timely news. Much of the society news disappeared and
content like weddings – if included at all – became a minor part of
lifestyle sections. But rather than focus on how the conversion affected
content, something a few studies have investigated, this study seeks to
understand how those working in the newspaper industry viewed this
transition. For example, to what degree did those working in newsrooms view
the change as a means of empowerment for women news producers and readers?
To what extent did news workers express a resistance to this change? And
how gendered are these two categories? The transition away from explicitly
named women's sections occurred in part because of a particularly active
and visible feminist movement, primarily supported by women. Was it the
case then that men were more likely to express a resistance to the new
approach within the industry while women, more likely to support feminist
movement, generally supported the move?
By examining the ways news workers of the time discussed this transition
from explicitly identified women's pages to non-gender specific lifestyle
pages, the study seeks to illuminate a discourse and understand its
nuances. This research adds to a handful of important existing works about
the termination of traditional women's pages and the industry's transition
to style pages. The value of this examination is its ability to illuminate
a discussion existing during a specific time in the industry's history and
identify the perspectives news workers held about a change in the
structuring of news content and the construction of a female audience. This
restructuring, after all, is a critical moment in the relationship between
women and the production of news. The few other studies focused on this
shift have primarily examined content or the approaches of a select few
editors. This research builds on those few existing studies to offer a more
complete understanding of a pivotal time in the U.S. newspaper industry.

A Section of Their Own
Women's pages became a part of large newspapers in the 1890s after
newspaper publishers and editors discovered few women were reading their
papers. The reason: a lack of newspaper content addressing issues and
topics of concern to women. Publishers and editors created pages
specifically for women to solve this problem. Joseph Pulitzer is typically
credited with their popularization (Marzolf, 1977). Pulitzer's New York
World began publishing columns in 1886 written by and devoted to women. By
1891 the success of this target marketing strategy was evident – the one
column had been transformed into an entire page carried in the Sunday World
and devoted to women's fashion and society. The section continued to expand
and by 1894, the World published at least one page daily "For and About
Women" (Marzolf, 1977). By 1896 William Randolph Hearst had developed eight
pages of women's content, which tripled in size within a year (Jackson,
1993). This sudden interest the newspaper industry showed in women readers,
however, did not appear because of an altruistic concern for women. Rather
the construction of women's pages and a female readership had more to do
with advertising, without which newspapers could not afford to publish
(Schudson, 1978).
Newspaper editors simplistically summarized the content in women's pages as
representing the "four Fs" – family, food, furnishings, and fashion.
Society news, weddings, recipes, and advice columns also filled the pages
of these women's sections. Tight resources and expectations of executive
editors, meant that for the most part the subject areas fell within a
traditional notion of femininity – a sphere of domesticity – and
highlighted the distinction between feature news and the timely news found
on the front pages of newspapers. This binary notion of news content is
often distinguished as "soft" and "hard" news (Tuchman, 1978). Early on the
hard/soft line was drawn on the basis of stereotypical notions of women and
men – feminine and masculine. Hartley (1982) explains that soft news
stories are "often defined as having a 'woman's angle' " and are
characterized as "fluff" while hard news is typically characterized by
conflict and violence (p. 38). Mills (1988) offers an amusing perspective
on this gendered distinction:  "Hard news? Soft news? Where did these terms
come from? Their sexual implications fairly leap from the pages" (p. 110).
But even if social events, fashion, and etiquette made up most of the
content in women's sections, serious news related to women also found a
place on these pages. The pages published news on women's changing roles in
society and feminist activism; women's participation in public affairs, at
universities, and world conferences (Marzolf, 1977). The significance of
these stories cannot be lost. While women's pages have been criticized
since their inception for offering superficial content, they have continued
to be a place where women's voices can be heard on a variety of topics of
great importance. In fact, some of the most important stories of interest
to women throughout the last century – the suffragist movement, birth
control, and the pending nomination of the first female vice president –
first appeared on the women's pages rather than front pages of U.S.
newspapers (Marzolf, 1977; Mills, 1988). Starting in the early 1900s,
women's sections covered "the changing progress of women in jobs and
professions and their demands for voting and other legal reforms" (Marzolf,
1977, p. 207). As the century progressed, news about children's issues,
health, rape law changes, domestic violence and women's wages could be
found in these special sections (Lont, 1995).  Particularly during the
1950s and 1960s women in newsrooms remember the women's movement and issues
of importance to women – topics not making it onto the news pages – became
common fare in women's pages across the country.[2] Mills (1988) explains
it as a time when a number of papers stretched the content in the women's
pages "to better reflect women's lives. Giving them a political bite that
men didn't notice because men didn't read them" (p. 114). Talking about the
Dallas Times-Herald, journalist Molly Ivins said reporters writing for the
women's section

… got away with murder because dumb male editors never bothered to read it.
… They were writing about birth control. Abortion. But it wasn't considered
'real news.' (Ivins in Mills, 1988, p. 116)

Ivins comments indicate another important related issue: women constructed
women's sections but men edited newspapers. Women's absence in
decision-making positions in the newsroom resulted in their limited access
to define news and construct newspapers. Critics argue this is a major
factor for why issues of importance to women are often absent from the
front and news pages of U.S. newspapers. And while women reporters become
more common with each passing decade, they have often been relegated to
covering traditional beats (including family, home, education, health and
welfare, writing features) and editing and writing for women's pages. These
positions editing and writing for women's pages, while limiting and
marginalizing in many respects, gave women opportunities to construct and
define news and changed how "women's issues" were covered (Streitmatter,
1998).[3] One former women's page editor said:

Back in the '50s, male editors didn't give a whit what we 'girls' put in
the women's section. Food, fashion, fluff – it was all filler to them. But
some of us women editors thought differently; we wanted to start covering
the substantive issues that women needed to know about. (Jurney in
Streitmatter, 1998, p. 72)

These editors employed a number of strategies to challenge the female
stereotypes found on their pages. Marie Sauer, the Post's women's pages
editor from 1946-1968, used personal profiles about women in traditional
male roles and "featured women's activities that were not considered
feminine such as sports, politics, aviation, and adventures" (Yang, 1996,
p. 372).
The traditional coverage of weddings and other social events also changed
during the 1950s and 1960s. At the Houston Post, the editor of the women's
page took brides off the front page of the section (Mills, 1988). Other
women's section editors across the country followed the Post's lead and
moved brides off of their covers too. Koky Dishon took over the women's
pages at the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch in the 1950s because she "had a
vision of what they could be with coverage of real issues and writing that
ignited the imagination" (Dishon, 1997, p. 94). Later Dishon moved to the
society editor post at the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal where she did
cover weddings. She explained how she was able to change tradition:

Slide-rule editing, based on Old Family and wealth, governed the size of
photos and stories for weddings. This changed when the daughter of a
company president and the daughter of a factory worker in the same company
exchanged vows in the same week. Their stories were paired equally,
side-by-side, under one headline. The old formula was broken. (Dishon,
1997, p. 95)

Critics Argue for Integration; Industry Dumps 'Women's Pages'
By the 1960s women in the newsroom were caught in a bind: appreciative of
the space and opportunities that women's sections had offered them, but
frustrated by their inability to move important content and their bylines
onto the front pages where the most serious news had a permanent place.
Across the nation, women and some men working in newsrooms and reading
newspapers began pointing out inherent problems with this gender-driven
story placement. Critics argued that these gendered sections, which
marginalized women's concerns, signified more than just news position.
Placing "women's issues" on special pages, these opponents argued, not only
spoke to editors' perceived importance of the issue it indicated the story
was meant only for women and was of no concern to men. Further, headings
indicating content for women made a difference in who read the stories and
diminished the worth of them. Those opposed to special women's sections
described them as "ghettoizing" women's content and serving as a "dumping
ground" for any content marginally related to women (Lont, 1995). A number
of people who have reflected on the elimination of women's sections in the
late 1960s point to a culture in the midst of heightened feminist awareness
as setting the stage for changes in the newspaper industry and its
construction of women readers. In 1975, Guenin wrote, "women's pages of
American newspapers are changing, spurred by a variety of factors, not the
least of which is the women's equality movement" (p. 66). Yang (1996) also
notes the connection to feminism, explaining, "In the heyday of the women's
movement, newspapers transformed the traditional women's pages into today's
unisex lifestyle sections" (p. 364). Women working in newsrooms envisioned
news sections that would take a human interest perspective while news about
women and "women's issues" would be integrated into all areas of the
newspaper. Ellen Goodman, a columnist for the Boston Globe, offers a
first-hand account of her experience:

In the 1960s, these pages were the ghetto to which women, children, food,
home and family were restricted. In the crest of the women's movement, many
of us in the business embarked on a movement to integrate the whole paper.
(Goodman, 1993, p. 59)

Marzolf (1977) explains,

In part these changes were in response to the issues raised by the women's
liberation movement; in part these pages had been changing since the 1950s.
In a receptive era of social change, some of the old stereotypes about
women seemed hopelessly dated by the facts about women of the 1970s, and
new names and fresh editorial approaches seemed appropriate. (p. 199)

Newspaper publishers and editors began to reevaluate the purpose of women's
sections and transformed (and/or re-named) them. But again, the elimination
of women's sections was not simply a decision to do what was right for
women but to do what made good business sense to newspapers. As Mills
(1988) explains, newspapers turned to a new format in large part because
they were attempting "to upgrade the content and increase the readership of
what had at too many papers become dowdy – and let's face it, boring –
women's sections" (p. 118). She explicitly links the shift to economic
concerns, explaining, "newspapers always need to sell ads, and appealing to
readers, not offending them, sells ads" (Mills, 1988, p. 110).  The growing
number of women in the newspaper industry and key sex harassment and gender
equality cases in the legal system during the 1960s likely also had an
affect on newspaper editors decision to terminate explicitly named women's
pages.
The Washington Post, which in January of 1969 unveiled "Style," is
typically credited with initiating the industry-wide move away from
traditional women's pages (Yang 1996). According to Mills (1988), by the
late 1960s the Washington Post's editor had become dissatisfied with the
"For and About Women" section. Mills explains, "He realized that a separate
section for women implied that other sections were for men and not women,
and was an anachronism in the modern world" (1988, p. 119). Mills (1988)
points out that the Los Angeles Times was also planning a similar
transformation of its women's pages in the late 1960s, even though the
paper did not debut "View" until July of 1970. While some newspapers made
the transition swiftly, others took their time. The New York Times started
transitioning its women's section in the late 1960s but did not complete
the change until the mid-1970s. Further, the New York Times' approach was
different from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times in that it
developed five thematic sections to replace the women's section, one for
each day of the week (Mills, 1988).[4] A "Living" and a "Home" section were
among the five sections and were looked at as replacements for the women's
pages.
Marzolf (1977) lists three approaches editors took throughout the 1970s as
they searched for a new identity to women's pages or human interest news.
The first, in the manner of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, was
to rethink and rename the sections to reflect a wide range of interests to
a diverse group of readers. A second approach, which Marzolf (1977) notes
as more typical, was to suggest new and expanded content while retaining
all of the standard features of the former women's sections. A third
method, typically chosen by small-town papers, was to keep women's sections
as they had been until editors had evaluated the success of the first two
approaches. A paper's circulation size typically correlated with the
approach. Newspapers in small towns, with fewer people and a sense that
everyone knows everyone, remained more traditional. In bigger cities, where
the news of a marriage held less significance to most of the population,
newspaper editors rid their sections of that kind of content (Scott, 1974).
With the transition, came the expectation that newspaper editors would show
a respect for  "women as readers and participants in the world" (Dishon,
1997, p. 98). Not only content, but also attitudes changed significantly,
according to Dishon. She quotes a male executive editor of Long Island, New
York's Newsday, as saying "I feel that women's pages should be a thing of
the past. They were frivolous, nonsubstantial and insulting to women"
(Dishon, 1997, p. 98). Newsday's feature section was called "Part II."
Dishon also quotes a Chicago Tribune Sunday editor as saying, at about the
same time, "We decided a few years ago that women were interested in the
same things as men" (p. 98). An examination of the J. C. Penny-University
of Missouri Awards program, which in 1960 began recognizing and promoting
"the field of women's interest journalism," also illustrates changes in
attitudes about what industry leaders considered an outstanding
journalistic product in the area of human interest news (Penny-Missouri
Awards, 1970, p. 2). By 1970 the women's pages (a few now named style) were
lauded as looking into "politics, the professions, voting, sex, drugs,
religion and health. Not in textbook or lecture language but in timely,
relevant description of local community activities and news events"
(Penny-Missouri Awards, 1970, p. 2). Marzolf (1977) points to the 1973 and
1974 awards to illustrate a clear trend toward change. While traditional
topics continued to receive coverage, the nature of that coverage had
transformed. She explains:

Staff writers reported in depth about the cost, quality and economics of
food and they also wrote abut (sic) nutrition and health and truth in
packaging, … Fashion writers covered the new fashion trends and consumer
stories about fabric quality, safety and prices. In recognition of this
trend, the Penny Awards for 1974 added a new category: consumer reporting.
(Marzolf, 1977, p. 203)

But a writer for Ms. Magazine did not show such enthusiasm for the newly
named sections, explaining:

The name may liberate the content but the section is still a dumping ground
for anything male editors consider a 'woman's' story. So we get all the
serious news about Equal Rights Amendments, rape-law changes, back-pay
lawsuits, and so forth, back among the girdle ads instead of page one or
two or three where they belong. (Van Gelder, 1974, p. 112)

What's in a Name?
A few studies offer details about the content of women's pages and feature
sections during these years of transition. For example, Miller (1976)
compares content in 1965 women's sections and 1975 lifestyle sections, to
illustrate the content changes (or lack of changes) in these renamed
sections. She sampled stories, advertisements, and photographs during four
separate weeks in 1965 and 1975 in the New York Times, Washington Post,
Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. Miller categorizes the content into
eight areas: lifestyle, consumer, food, fashion, social,
entertainment/arts, syndicated features, and politics.[5] After examining
each of the newspapers, Miller noted that each of the newly named sections
(with the exception of the New York Times) had decreased in size and all
four newspapers had expanded their entertainment sections. Further, she
found that except for the New York Times, which substantially increased the
amount of lifestyle (including relationships and child rearing stories) and
consumer coverage, style editors most often replaced traditional content
with entertainment related stories. Miller also noted that within the
lifestyle category, child rearing and activities for children had decreased
the most. Further, she found that "despite their differing emphases on
various topics, all four papers overwhelmingly focused on activities
involving both men and women" (Miller, 1976, p. 645). Surprisingly, this
fact seemed virtually unchanged from 1965 when the sections were designated
for women. Finally, at all but the Washington Post, photographs of women
dominated the new sections and roughly half of the advertisements were
directed at women. Miller expresses concern that while in these newly named
sections the content may address areas of interest for both men and women,
advertisements most often address women and women primarily occupy the
photos. She writes, "If the first thing a male reader sees are photos of
women and ads for women, he may not stick around long enough to examine the
content and tone of the stories" (Miller, 1976, p. 646). These findings
help explain why many readers and journalists continued to (and often
still) think of lifestyle sections as women's pages with stories that are
of no concern to men. Miller concludes, "there have been certain changes in
lifestyle sections since 1965. But, at some papers, there has been more
talk than change. And, in some instances, the changes have been for the
worse" (p. 647).
Guenin (1975) had similar conclusions to Miller. She hypothesized that
newly named and re-designed lifestyle pages would offer more relevant
content to a wider variety of readers than did the traditional women's
pages. She assessed content during April 1973 in six newspapers, three with
new gender-neutral sections (the Los Angeles Times, St. Petersburg
[Florida] Times, and the Davenport [Iowa] Times-Democrat) and three
newspapers with traditional women's pages (Philadelphia Bulletin, the
[Phoenix] Arizona Republic, and Albuquerque Journal). The author analyzed
content using a column inch count and designed categories using topics
found in articles describing the transition of women's pages from their
traditional format to general interest sections. Two categories were
developed, "traditional" and "suggested." Suggested content included
community improvement and environmental stories, along with stories related
to economics.[6] Guenin found that traditional content – advice, astrology,
beauty, brides, fashion, food, home and society – continued to take a large
percentage of the space in the traditionally named sections while
entertainment stories replaced traditional content in the updated pages.
Further her research illustrates that the updated sections fail to offer
the types of suggested content offered by critics (p. 69). She writes,
"Rather than enlarge coverage of subjects deemed important to readers, it
appears that efforts to upgrade the pages have resulted instead in the
replacement of traditional copy with stories about movies, books, theater,
travel, arts, and entertainment" (Guenin, 1975, p. 69). Further, Guenin
notes that the traditional women's pages are much less problematic than
critics contend. She explains, "…the Bulletin and the Republic, cover
topics other than the traditional at least as well as the upgraded sections
and also have food feature content" (p. 69).

  Methods
To understand a discourse within an industry that took place decades
earlier presents a research challenge as all of the data must come from
previously published materials or through interviews with those present
during the time in question. I chose the former method for two main
reasons. First, the previously published material is logistically easier to
access; second, there is an authenticity in the information that is not
spoiled by a personal recollection that is blurred by time. Further, the
method chosen is likely to offer more summaries of the discourse as this is
the nature of written material. To locate previously published information
about the industry perspectives on the transition from women's pages to
lifestyle pages, I looked for articles published in trade journals during
the 1970s. I chose trade journals because these magazines print articles
specifically about the newspaper industry. I narrowed the data to that
published from 1969 through the 1970s because these years cover the initial
transition by the Washington Post while covering a time when other
newspapers were undergoing the transformation. The search uncovered
surprisingly few articles about the transition, only eight. The eight
articles include six published in Editor & Publisher (one each in 1970,
1972, 1974, and 1975, and two in 1971) along with one story published in
Columbia Journalism Review (also in 1971) and one in The Quill (published
in 1975).  While few articles were identified for analysis, the articles
offer more variety of voices than might be expected. That is because four
of these articles describe conferences where specific discussion about
women's pages occurred; conferences attended by dozens of editors and
reporters from across the country. So while few in number, the articles
offer a relatively rich set for analyzing industry discourse related to
this transformation in how newspapers packaged content for women.
To determine to what degree news workers welcomed the transition to
gender-neutral sections as a means for empowerment women, I looked for
voices critical of the traditional women's pages or that praised the newly
formed style pages. To determine the level of resistance to the transition,
I also looked for voices critical of the new style sections. Within these
areas, the goal was to identify themes related to this empowerment or
resistance. Finally, where possible I analyzed the gender of those taking a
particular position either for or against the termination of women's pages
to determine whether gender indicated a particular perspective.

Same Problem with a New Name?
The discourse in the eight articles analyzed for this study primarily
offers the perspectives of women (and a few men) who edit and write for
traditionally named women's pages and newly named style sections. The first
article, dated October 17, 1970 and published in Editor & Publisher, offers
a confusing report about research conducted by a journalism student at the
University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette. Without much detail about
the researcher's methods, the article reports in six brief paragraphs that
"personality pieces, syndicated advice columns, and fashion news are
favorite reading matter for women, according to results of a study of six
women's sections" (Editor & Publisher, 1970, p. 13). Further, the article
reports that the author of the research "polled 20 women's news editors to
learn which women's departments ranked highest in the opinion of the
editors" (Editor & Publisher, 1970, p. 13). The Washington Post and Los
Angeles Times are included on the list even though by the publication date
of the article each of these papers had terminated the production of
women's pages in favor of a "style" section. Likely, the research had been
conducted prior to the switch. Another detail of the research, according to
the article:

Several of the women editors volunteered that better women's sections could
be produced if more newspapers would treat the women's staff as the equal
of the cityside staff, hire women reporters as carefully as they hire
newsroom reporters, pay them adequately and demand professional
performances. (Editor & Publisher, 1970, p. 13)

In 1971, three articles about the women's pages appeared in the trade
journals. The first, titled "How they would liberate the women's pages from
drab content," summarized a conference in Chicago, organized by the
University of Chicago's Center for Policy Study and the Urban Journalism
Fellowship Program of the university. The extensive article, covering
nearly three pages, describes the conversation of four (male) panelists and
40 women's editors from the United States and Canada. One of these male
panelists was Nicholas Von Hoffman, a columnist for the "women's section"
of the Washington Post. The article begins by explaining that the
University of Chicago's Center for Policy Study surveyed 700 women's page
editors nationwide in 1970 and found that "a growing number of women
[editors] are modifying and abandoning some of their traditional practices,
with a new thrust toward more news and features which are genuinely
relevant to the needs and interests of readers" (Editor & Publisher, 1971,
p. 9). The conference was designed to "bring women editors together" and
expose them to some important urban problems (Editor & Publisher, 1971, p. 9).
But according to the article, most of the conversation addressed the
remarks of Colleen (Koky) Dishon, editor and president of Features and
News, Chicago, and former women's editor of the Chicago Daily News and
Milwaukee Sentinel. Dishon said, "women's editors have made only small
inroads into the business of covering and communicating 'real issues to
women' " (Editor & Publisher, 1971, p. 9). She complained that women's
pages were "still glued to the old agendas" and that fashion coverage
needed to take up less space. Dishon went on to argue that women's section
editors needed to fill their pages with content addressing "the problems
which many women workers have, including those with labor unions,
management and schools" (Editor & Publisher, 1971, p. 9). Rather than
blaming women editors for the problems with these sections, Dishon and
other conference participants pointed to male editors who were unwilling to
allow change. The article explains that Dishon said she believed:

Women's editors find themselves trapped by a system that may at one time
have served them well but is no longer flexible enough to let them do an
adequate job of newspapering. It is clear, she continued, that men who
control the newspapers are not ready to make the decision to change their
women's pages. (Editor & Publisher, 1971, p. 9)

Washington Post columnist Von Hoffman complained, "we have editors and
publishers who don't regard the (women's) section as part of journalism,
but as an adjunct to the advertising department" (Editor & Publisher, 1971,
p. 10). Especially interesting is that Von Hoffman said this after the Post
had terminated the explicitly named women's section in 1969 and debuted
"Style." This indicates that in-house the style section was still largely
thought to be a "women's section" at least by those writing for it. The
article details other participants beliefs about the future direction of
"women's news" but for the most part the discussion focuses on featuring
serious content with no one advocating the elimination of explicitly named
women's pages.
Columbia Journalism Review published a nearly three-page commentary by
Nicholas Von Hoffman in its July/August issue. Much of what Von Hoffman
writes echoes his comments and the discussion at the above-mentioned
conference. In the article he explicitly writes that he is a columnist for
the Washington Post's women's pages, again reinforcing the notion that even
though the name had changed, the target audience had not really. But Von
Hoffman complains about a newspaper system that devalues women's news
content. He writes: "The rules for journalism are upside down on the
women's pages. Again, I want to emphasize, this is not a reflection on the
staff but on the management" (Von Hoffman, 1971, p. 52). Von Hoffman argues
newspapers have missed important consumer news stories. He blames a lack of
resources and a management whose expectations for the women's pages are
more in line with the advertising department than the news department.
Finally in September 1971, Editor & Publisher published an article titled
"Less chronicle, more guide: women's page style changed." The article, just
a little more than a page in length, describes syndicated content for
women's pages. The article both describes the editor of the new
"Page-in-a-Package" and also the staff, providing insight into the type of
content one could expect to find in the newly developed product. Editor
Louise Hickman Lione's background, though primarily in fashion, also
includes a stint as a feature writer. Stories about cooking, fashion,
government and politics, "life-style," money and time management, crafts
and society "from the black writer's point of view" will make up the page's
content. The article also states that in talking with editors about the
page, Lione found that between 30 and 40 percent said they were "thinking
seriously about changing the look and content of their women's pages by the
end of the year" (Williamson, 1971, p. 43). This insight offers an
indication that the movement to reconfigure women's pages had taken off.
Again, however, the name of the section was not the issue but rather the
section's content and appearance.
An article titled "Editors: Don't drop women from paper's women's pages"
and published in Editor & Publisher in July 1972, clearly replicates an
ongoing theme that the real issue is content and not a section's name. The
lead paragraph explains: "Changing the title of women's pages is not the
answer to upgrading, not if the content remains the same" (Kelly, 1972, p.
30). The article, more than two full pages, describes a "Women's Pages in
the 70s" seminar held at the University of Kentucky at Lexington. At the
seminar, sponsored by Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation
and Robert Murphy, the university's School of Communication's chair,
editors warned that changing the title of women's sections is an all too
common practice but is not enough (Kelly, 1972). Conference participants
pointed out that newly named feature sections directed at no one in
particular were not the answer either. Forty-one people attended the
three-day seminar – 37 women and three men who held posts as women's
editors and a male managing editor. According to the article, Murphy opened
the seminar by suggesting, "perhaps there is no need for women's pages in
newspapers; that such segregation is archaic" (Murphy in Kelly, 1972, p.
30). But the publication goes on:

He got no takers on his idea. Perhaps the most definite conclusion that
came from the three-day seminar was that women's pages are needed, here to
stay, and, for the most, getting better. (Murphy in Kelly, 1972, p. 30)

Rather than terminate women's pages, seminar attendees seemed to agree that
women's sections needed to focus on the issues and problems relevant to
working women since 49 percent of American women between 18 and 64 worked
outside of the home.
Participant, Dorothy Jurney, women's editor of the Detroit Free Press in
1972, criticized the industry's move away from sections focusing on women.
She said, "some of the sections that have replaced the traditional women's
sections in newspapers in America are not women's section in any sense of
the word. They are feature sections and they have lost a great deal in
change" (Jurney in Kelly, 1972, p. 30). The article continues to describe
Jurney's perspective for approximately one-fourth of the story. It explains
that Jurney said the elimination of women's pages was problematic because
women lived different lives than men and desired distinct content in their
newspapers. She said, "Women have a lifestyle that is different from men.
They are still generally responsible for family, food and interpersonal
relationships" (p. 30). Jurney believed women should have a section of the
newspaper where they can find these topics. But Jurney agreed with other
participants that serious news stories in women's sections beat feature
stories anytime. Jurney's point echoed the convictions of other
participants; that women's sections belonged in the newspaper but that they
should include stories of substance. For example, rather than provide a
recipe, critics of the traditional method suggested writing about food
industry safety. Another editor at the conference said,  "I'm afraid that
women's pages are relying on yesterday's subjects for today's pages"
(Kelly, 1972, p. 34). The editor called for "telling women new types of
information such as how to run for office, where to get help with legal
problems or even how hippie parents view childrearing" (Kelly, 1972, p.
34). Participants blamed top management for not allowing women's sections
to live up to this ideal. In fact, participants suggested that a similar
seminar should be held for these top managers. The article also described
participant discussion about how to design a better women's section, in
terms of font, use of color, and layout.
Another article in Editor & Publisher published in July 1974 titled
"Women's page changes noted by three editors" described a "Changing Women's
Pages" session at the Editors' conference in Palo Alto, California. Elaine
Levine, an executive editor of the Suburban Newspaper Publications, Inc.,
that oversaw 12 weeklies in 1974, offered a more optimistic perspective in
the article. She detailed how traditional women's section topics were being
turned into serious news stories. She explained, "we like to tell [our
readers] such things as where they can get low-priced hamburger meat and
where fruits and other commodities are not too high" (Scott, 1974, p. 21).
Clearly, however, Levine does not describe any section in her newspapers as
a "women's section." The article quotes her as saying: "I don't know what
I'm doing here for we have no women's pages in our paper" (Scott, 1974, p. 21).
The article offers further evidence that content in these sections were
changing but also that the name changes indicated a renewed philosophical
approach. Through her experience, Bea Anderson, editor of the "People"
section in the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, illustrated not only changes in
content but also how those changes were perceived. At the Palo Alto
conference, she is quoted as saying:

Last year we placed third in the Penny-Missouri awards,' said Bea. 'We had
the club news, weddings and the usually [sic] trappings of the society
pages, and I honestly felt we deserved no award. Then we completely redid
our sections and called it "People." We began charging for weddings, just
like we did for funerals. We threw out all club news unless the clubs were
doing something special for the community. Surprisingly there were no
complaints. We began doing depth stories: homosexuality, venereal disease,
couples living together though not married – just a whole bag of things we
never touched before. And I'm sure we brought more male readers to the
section. This time we won first prize in the Penny-Missouri awards and this
time I agreed we were entitled to it. (Anderson in Scott, 1974, p. 21)

Not all of the editors attending the conference agreed on the specifics of
women's sections, yet most agreed that "women's sections should be less
social-minded; instead should enlarge their scope so as to attract male
readers as well" (p. 21). Anderson and Levine both represent editors who
had essentially stopped calling their pages "women's" and had broadened the
definition of their readers. Their perspective indicates a growing trend.
That the title of the conference was "Changing Women's Pages" and that the
discussion primarily focused on altering the content of sections targeting
women, however, may speak more broadly about the industry. At the same
time, it is clear that most of these section editors believed that men
should be part of their audience.
A three-page Editor & Publisher article, published in April of 1975,
details the year's J.C. Penny-University of Missouri journalism awards
workshop. Seventy-five editors and writers attended, including nine men.
Debate at the conference addressed the "rigid vs. blurred lines between
news and women/lifestyle pages" (Williamson, 1975, p. 30). The summary in
the article indicates that by 1975 women and lifestyle sections were
essentially thought of as interchangeable. Again, content is the focus of
the debate and the name of the sections is not an issue. And much of the
content discussion had to do with what the article calls "old problems
still being discussed" (Williamson, 1975, p. 38). For example: how to deal
with weddings on the women/lifestyle pages. Others, however, discussed how
content needed to address real life issues. Carol Sutton, the Louisville
Courier-Journal's editor (and first woman managing editor of a major daily
newspaper), is quoted in the article as crediting the women's movement with
pushing newspapers to have a more "rational view of people and their
society and, therefore, of readers and their needs" (Sutton in Williamson,
1975, p. 38). She described the philosophy at her newspaper: "We feel that
women – both as readers and subjects of news – belong all through the
newspaper, on the front page, in the regional news, in the sports section
as well as in the features section" (Williamson, 1975, p. 38). But the
article indicates that this integration Sutton speaks of is not common
practice at many papers. She is quoted as saying that she was "both
'surprised and a little disturbed' by a 'We-They' attitude expressed during
seminar meetings" (Williamson, 1975, p. 38). The comments lead to the
belief that this integration of content about women had not been fully
realized at many newspapers, and that whether named "women's pages" or
something else, the feature sections of newspapers continued to publish
news for and about women. Another comment by Sutton is telling. While
addressing workshop participants she said,  " 'I don't find many women's
editors or people editors or what-have-you editors… " (Williamson, 1975, p.
38). Again there seems to be this "what's in a name" attitude in her comments.
The last of the articles, published during February 1975 in The Quill,
comes from the perspective of a "women's editor" at a paper with a
circulation of 17,500. The writer explains the difficulties a "women's
editor" has at a small newspapers with few resources. Her article is
especially interesting because it begins by pointing to comments at the
recent Penny-Missouri conference and also an article published in Ms.
magazine. At the conference an Op-Ed editor for the New York Times told
women's editors "to give the 'serious' subjects – abortion, child support,
homosexuality and lesbianism – back to the city-side. She told them they
had adopted a 'new Puritanism,' and were campaigning against 'homemaking,
parties and fun' " (Lentz, 1975, p. 29). The Ms. article, however,
"applauds the 'serious' topics – abortion, rape, child care and job
discrimination on the women's pages" (Lentz, 1975, p. 29). Lentz, the
author of The Quill article, asks: "What's a women's editor to do?" Her
article essentially acknowledges the schizophrenic nature of content in
women's pages but, she argues, at least women's issues get "the best play"
in these sections. Lentz also addresses the feminist argument for
integrating women's news into all areas of the paper. She writes:

[W]hen I hear the women's movement making noises because their news appears
alongside of those other people, 'club women,' I wonder what kind of
thinking process they go through. If it's women they are wishing to reach,
is it the ones who have already been liberated beyond the women's pages?
(Lentz, 1975, p. 29).

As for Lentz's title as a women's editor, she explains that she has tried
other names but has only been successful in confusing people. In the end
she seems to agree that no matter what the name, newspapers are infused
with tradition and like it or not that means women's sections that will
carry the food, fashion, and society news, along with "serious" stories for
and about women.

Discussion and Conclusion
The transition from women's pages to lifestyle pages marks a point in the
history of U.S. newspapers. It is a time when the industry appeared to have
reconsidered and restructured its female audience. The few articles found
in trade journals during this decade of change speaks to the importance of
this transition in two ways. From one perspective, it can be argued that
the publication of only eight articles indicates that the issue really did
not continue to hold a place of importance in the industry discourse. On
the other side, however, four of these stories covered conferences and
workshops specifically related to the state of women's pages. And these
events were well attended, primarily by women editors in charge of these
pages. So while the publications might not indicate a large dialogue, the
numbers of attendees at these conferences offers some indication of the
numbers of people involved in this discourse. Further, because travel and
conferences typically have a cost for attendees, it is a fairly safe
assumption that newspaper management believed the issue to be worth
spending money on. That most of these attendees were women also indicates
who dominated the discourse. Further, it seemed women at larger newspapers
were able to have a stronger voice in the discourse as they were offered
more opportunity to speak at conferences and were more often quoted in the
articles.
In looking for instances of empowerment and resistance, I found little
evidence of either. The discourse was dominated by two main themes that
only marginally related to these notions I planned to identify. That is
because rather than embrace the change as one that would bring women in the
newsroom power or resist it because it may take control away from women
editors and reporters, those who participated in the discourse I analyzed
seemed to pay little attention to this "moment" of change. Evidence from
this data indicates this great transition was primarily one of name and
design and those people working on these sections (regardless of the name
of them) were focused on the content of them and not the name. With this in
mind, distinguishing gender lines from this research data is also
impossible. What is telling about the gender, however, is that most of
those working on these traditional women's pages and new style sections
were women, and they felt constrained by men in upper managements and
editorial positions.
By far the most prominent theme, though not always explicitly named,
related to the notion that content within these pages held more importance
than the name of the section itself. The discourse uncovered within the
trade journals indicated that those working on "style" and "women's" pages
were concerned with the type of content and not with the title above that
content. In fact, often even when the name of a section had changed,
editors still referred to it as a women's sections. One reason for this was
that the newly named sections still included content thought to be of
primary interest to women and also content that had been published in
traditional women's pages. This offers an interesting insight and leads to
a number of questions. For example, why did the industry move to change the
name if in-house the sections remained the same in both theory and
practice? Was it a strategy to ward off criticism and appease women and
feminists or simply a strategy for revamping an outdated section in order
to gain readers and advertisers? It's likely that in the wide range of U.S.
newspaper editors these two motivations, along with the altruistic belief
in integrating "women's content," played a part in the industry's move to
"style" pages.
The majority of those participating in this discussion believed that
women's and style sections should publish stories about serious issues that
affect both men and women. The "serious" topics named, however, have
traditionally been thought of as "women's issues," including abortion and
childcare. This reinforces the notion that even these "new" sections were
still thought of as women's sections. Evidence suggests most women editors
were not complaining about this fact either. Especially interesting in the
findings was when a conference panelist said women's sections were no
longer needed and no one at the conference agreed with him. Another theme
identified was that editors of these women's/lifestyle sections often felt
like second-class citizens. So even though the name may have changed, the
issues those working on the sections dealt with remained the same. Editors
and reporters were constrained by management, expected to cater to
advertisers, and offered limited resources. Previous work on this subject
indicates these complaints are nothing new.
These results offer an interesting insight into the discourse in the
newspaper industry during the transition from women's pages to lifestyle
pages. Overall the results indicate that during the 1970s the
transformation was essentially a change in name and little more. Previous
writings and research indicate that the movement to include serious content
in the women's pages of newspapers began soon after the birth of these
sections in the 1890s but had taken on momentum in the 1950s. Women working
on lifestyle sections in newsrooms during the 1970s were still struggling
with the constraints that women working on "women's pages" had been
encountering for decades. And, no matter what the name of the section,
serious stories related to "women's issues" were still being published in
these sections. The data suggests that the second-class status of women
inside newsrooms and on the pages of newspapers was no different than in
most other places in the country. But contrary to what many might believe,
women in newsrooms during the 1970s were not fighting to rid their papers
of these sections. Instead they were developing and employing strategies
that their newsroom sisters before them had used to produce content for
women. That women in the newsroom were not trying to fight the system can
be explained by their belief that at least in these sections news of
importance to women would get play and women would have opportunities to
shape this content.
Expanding the data set to include popular magazine and newspaper articles
published during the 1970s and related to this transition could strengthen
this research project. Interviews with those women and men who worked in
newsrooms during this time could also offer valuable material to the study.
Further research could also examine the following decades to see how the
newspaper industry continued to alter its construction of female readers.
Especially interesting is the industry movement to reintroduce explicitly
named women's sections starting in the late 1980s.



[1]  A handful of books offer greater depth into the history of women's
pages and women in U.S. newspapers. For more, see Belford (1986), Marzolf
(1977), Mills (1988), Ross (1936), and Schlipp & Murphy (1983). Marzolf
(1977), Mills (1988), and Ross (1936) offer detailed accounts of the
history of women's work in newspapers. Ross (1936) is particularly
interesting because it is written from an insider's perspective – Ross
started working for New York papers in 1919. Belford (1986) offers
biographical information about women in the newspaper industry. The
objective of the book "is to show how the careers of women who became
journalists (particularly the nineteenth-century pioneers), and what they
wrote were shaped by both personal economic necessity and by the demands of
the newspaper editors of their era" (p. x). Schilpp and Murphy (1983) also
detail distinctive women in the newspaper profession, starting with the
first woman publisher. For details of the original creation of women's
pages, see Marzolf (1977), 205-207.
[2]  These issues included birth control, child abuse, and spousal abuse.
See Streitmatter (1998) for Dorothy Jurney's account of how she first
started covering the birth control controversy on her women's pages in
1959. Streitmatter explains, "Through this technique of volunteering to
cover events and thereby reducing the workload of male editors and
reporters, Jurney successfully expanded the scope of her section" (p. 73).
[3]  The Women in Journalism Oral History Project of the Washington Press
Club Foundation offers a rich first-hand perspective on women in
newspapers. For more, see [http://npc.press.org/wpforal/ohhome.htm]. In
Streitmatter (1998), the author uses the oral history project to answer
questions about how women editors changed women and society pages to better
reflect women and their content needs. Rather than concentrate on the types
of changes that occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s (like much
of the work focusing on this time), Streitmatter attempts to answer
questions about how these women were able to make changes to newspaper
content while working within the male dominated profession. His work also
looks at the way these women balanced their professional and family
responsibilities and the price they paid in becoming agents of change.
[4]  This thematic approach is still quite popular today.
[5]  To analyze stories, Miller (1976) used the following categories:
"1)lifestyle (including personal relationships, sex roles, work
relationships, rearing children), 2) consumer (health, home care and
furnishings, personal finances, environment), 3) food (primarily recipes),
4) fashion (clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics), 5) social (social events,
leisure activities, engagement and wedding announcements), 6)
entertainment/arts (reviews, news about shows and productions, profiles on
entertainers), 7) syndicated features (personal advice columns, hobbies,
health), and 8) politics and other news" (p. 642).
[6]  Guenin's "suggested content" category includes a long list of topics.
The list includes: "adolescence, aging, children, community improvement
(including environmental stories), consumerism, economics, editorials and
letters, education, employment, equality movement, family hobbies, housing,
humor, legal problems, marriage, medicine, mental health, minority news,
population control, single life, transportation, volunteer services and
working women" (p. 67).




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