In 1959 Jurney moved to the Detroit Free Press and Anderson became Women's Page editor at the Herald,[3][2] making Paxson her assistant.
[1] Anderson transformed the section from one containing little information of any importance into one that addressed the emerging women's issues of the day such as reproductive rights.
[1] In the early 1960s, Catherine Shipe East, living in Washington D.C., recognized the unusual nature of Anderson's section and developed an informal news service to make sure the work was seen by important women in the feminist movement.
[2] Influential Dallas women's page editor Vivian Castleberry "read Anderson's section religiously.
Knowing her managers would never allow her to report on this, she wrote a story about it, took it to the printer, had several hundred brochures printed, and sold them herself for twenty-five cents.
[3] When Anderson won the inaugural Penney-Missouri Award, the citation specifically praised "her success at replacing club notices with news stories."
As Women's Page editor for the Miami Herald Anderson won four Penney-Missouri Awards for General Excellence.
Kimberly Wilmot Voss and Lance Speere, writing in the scholarly journal Florida Historical Quarterly, said Anderson "personified" the Penney-Missouri competition's goals.
"[2] Castleberry said, "Back then, there were just a few papers that were on the cutting edge of women's issues, and Marie Anderson's was one of that small number.