Social Change & Correcting Collective Memory: Women’s Page Editors in the Washington Press Club Foundation’s Oral History Project

• In Event: Couriers of Justice: Print and Radio Activists and Social Change

Abstract

The Washington Press Club Foundation’s Oral History Project Women in Journalism included four newspaper women’s page editors from the 1940s through the 1970s. Their stories included commonalties about battles to update their sections, close community partnerships and a mix of hard and soft news. These stories ran counter to what journalism history had previously presented. Most histories had concluded that the women’s pages had limited, traditional content that reinforced women’s place in the home. The oral histories of these four women opened the door for the study of the women’s pages and led to dissertations, book chapters and journal articles that corrected the collective memory of what women’s journalism consisted of between World War II and the beginning of the Women’s Liberation Movement. In fact, it was these sections of the newspaper that help lay the groundwork for social change for women.

Author

• Kimberly Voss, University of Central Florida