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↑ Marie Anderson stands in front of the Miami Herald building. (Courtesy of Western Historical Manuscript Collection)
Marj Paxson’s first job as a journalist lasted less than two years. After graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1944, she went to work for United Press in Lincoln, Neb., for $25 a week. But when World War II ended in August 1945, female journalists such as Paxson were forced out of their jobs to make room for returning veterans. Many stayed long enough to train their replacements before being let go. Still, Paxson persevered. She joined The Associated Press in Omaha, Neb., then landed in Houston, where she worked for both the Houston Post and the Houston Chronicle. She joined Gannett in 1976 and two years later became publisher of the chain’s newspaper in Chambersburg, Pa. In 1987, when Paxson was enjoying her first year of retirement in Muskogee, Okla., she decided to donate money to her alma mater. She called Jean Gaddy Wilson, then an MU faculty member and the founding executive director of New Directions for News, a research project that examined how women were presented in the media. Wilson drew up a short list of ideas that included a project she had wanted to start for some time: a comprehensive collection documenting the personal and professional lives of women in media. Wilson jumped on a plane to Oklahoma to pitch the possibilities to Paxson, who immediately picked Wilson’s women in media idea. Paxson gave $50,000, plus her personal papers, to the project. Gannett kicked in another $13,000. From there, with the help of Nancy Lankford, then-director at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, the National Women and Media Collection was on its feet. Paxson’s personal correspondence, news clippings, photos, speeches and other papers she donated to the collection tell a vivid story of a woman succeeding in a male-dominated field. But Paxson’s is just one of many stories that fill nearly 1,000 boxes in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at MU’s Ellis Library. The archives stretch from the Civil War to the present day, including the deaf journalist who wrote under a male pen name and the pioneering founders and editors of Ms. magazine. “A lot of these women were firsts,” says David Moore, director of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. “That’s something that intrigues us, something we really want to capture.” Wilson, who now is retired and living in Marshall, has remained involved in the collection, which is continuously growing. New faces and stories continue to emerge from the nation’s newsrooms. Just last month, says Jenny Lukomski, assistant director for collections at WHMC, “we had two people ask us about donating their papers.” One prospective contributor is one of the only women covering the automobile industry in Detroit. While the archivists face the challenge of collecting material in the digital age of disposable e-mails, Moore is hopeful, and he sees the next 20 years as bigger and better than the past two decades. 2007 marks the collection’s 20th year. As part of the celebration, the Western Historical Manuscript Collection invited several female journalists to MU to discuss the evolution of women in the media. The women praised the pioneers who came before them, but they are not entirely satisfied with the state of women in the newsroom at the start of the 21st century. The celebration’s keynote speaker, Tad Bartimus, a former Associated Press reporter, said that while women are accepted as reporters and editors, they are not high enough in the media hierarchy to affect how the media operate and are perceived. “The institutional mind-set is still male,” Bartimus said during her speech. Indeed, seven of the eight names on The Kansas City Star’s masthead are male. Gannett’s new CEO is a man. Eleven of the 18 members of The New York Times’ editorial board are male. After a woman held the top job at the St. Louis Post-Disptach, she was replaced upon her departure by a man, Arnie Robbins. A study of 273 newsroom managers conducted by the American Press Institute and Pew Center for Civic Journalism in 2002 found that women are not as evenly represented as men are in upper-management positions. The men surveyed are distributed almost evenly across the three categories: 32 percent are editors, 34 percent are managing editors and 34 percent are assisting managing editors. However, women aren’t as evenly distributed in upper management. While a third of women are managing editors, nearly 50 percent are assistant managing editors, leaving a select few for the top editorial positions. Bobbi Bowman, the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ director of diversity, says more women and minorities in upper management would be good for the business and good for journalism. “That’s where the decisions about coverage are made,” she says. “It’s an accuracy question. The more accurately your newsroom reflects your community, the more accurate your newspaper will be.” Geneva Overholser, the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting with the Missouri School of Journalism, agrees with the need to put more women at the boardroom table. She says journalism schools around the country are attracting more and more women. At MU, home to the world’s first school of journalism, two-thirds of students admitted to the program in 1960 were men, Associate Dean Brian Brooks says. That ratio has since been reversed. Between 2004 and 2006, women were, on average, more than 66 percent of the journalism school’s student body. |
