Women's page
[1] In the century's final two decades, a "motley assemblage" of stories presumed to be of interest to women began to be gathered together into a single section of newspapers in Britain, Canada, and the US.
[2]: 142 In the 1880s and 1890s, newspaper publishers such as Joseph Pulitzer started developing sections of their papers to attract women readers,[3]: 1 [4]: 38 who were of interest to advertisers.
[3]: 5 Industrialization had profoundly increased the number of branded consumer products, and advertisers recognized that women were the primary purchasing decision makers for their households.
[2]: 32 News historian Gerald Baldasty put it that, "For the newspaper industry, a woman's charm was purely financial.
"[5]: 126 Sections focused on the "Four F's" – family, food, furnishings, and fashion – and on society news and advice and recipe columns.
[6] These trends were pioneered by smaller metropolitan newspapers such as the Herald, the Dallas Times-Herald, and the Detroit Free Press.
[4]: 42–43 Many major US papers were slow to follow,[4]: 42–43 including the New York Times, whose women's section was named "Food, Fashion, Furnishings, and Family" until 1971.
[8] The awards were inaugurated in 1960 to recognize women's sections with progressive content[6]: 34 that covered stories other than society, club, and fashion news.
[3]: 32 [9] The awards presentations each year were accompanied by influential workshops that encouraged women's page editors to focus on more substantive, progressive issues.
[6]: 34 1966 keynote speaker Marjorie Paxson told attendees, "It's time we started putting some hard news into (our pages.)
[10] The second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with newspapers' movements to replace women's pages with features and lifestyles sections.
The 1965 announcement of the formation of the National Organization for Women ran between an article about Saks Fifth Avenue and a recipe for turkey stuffing.
[6]: 163 As late as 1993 media scholar M. Junior Bridge found that the incidence of references to women on the front page of the New York Times had only risen to 13% of names mentioned, up from 5% in 1989.
[4]: 48 This happened twice to Paxson, when two different newspapers eliminated their women's sections, which she had been editing, demoted her, and hired a man as features editor.
[6]: viii In a 1960s-era speech, Marie Anderson told women's page journalists, "be a motivating source in your community.
The journalists encouraged the clubwomen first to tackle newsworthy work, and then to write press releases useful in the selection and development of stories.
The Miami Herald ran a series profiling black residents in 1962, "well before the front pages of the newspaper addressed societal inequities.
