An investigation into what newspaper food editors were covering at the annual food editors meetings from 1950 through 1970. It previews many of the women who will be in my upcoming book, The Food Section.

1. Newspaper Food Journalism: The
History of Food Sections & The
Story of Food Editors
Presented at the 2014 AEJMC SE
Colloquium, March 21, 2014
Kimberly Wilmot Voss, Associate Professor
University of Central Florida

2. Polly Paffilas, Akron Beacon Journal
“The newspaper food editor is the
homemakers’ best friend, mother confessor
and mentor. Mrs. Jones calls us when she
can’t understand a recipe in a national
magazine or when Graham Kerr talks about
clarified butter. Mrs. Jones doesn’t call the
magazine or the TV station. She calls me.”

3. Ann Criswell, Houston Chronicle
“You may be surprised that a food editor’s life isn’t all
champagne and caviar. There is the constant stress of
deadlines; keeping up with (and explaining to readers)
scientific and nutrition advancements that can change
from hour to hour; learning about food safety, production
and agricultural phenomena such as genetically altered
foods; and having to master new computers and printing
technologies (often while on deadline).”

4. Ruth Ellen Church, Chicago Tribune
“We do most of our own food photographs, conduct a
daily $5 favorite recipe competition, maintain a mail and
telephone service to homemakers, scout for what’s new
in the kitchen, test recipes and such. In addition, I write a
daily and Sunday column, and supervise the publication
of a number of supplements each year, notably the
Thanksgiving and Christmas special sections.”

5. The Food Section Impact
•
•
New York Herald Tribune in 1935: food
section received more than 78,000 calls and
letters from readers
Seattle Times in 1973: more than 20,000
calls came in each year to food editor
“Dorothy Dean”

6. Ruth Ellen Church, Chicago Tribune
•
1955: “Fully a third of the products and foods
we buy now in the supermarket were not
even in existence 10 years ago: instant
puddings, cake mixes, instant coffee, instant
dry milk, detergents, the wide array of frozen
and pre-packaged foods.”

7. Newspaper Food Sections
•
•
•
•
Fluff
“Just recipes”
Influenced by advertising
Annual meeting of food editors

8. Sen. Moss Accusations
•
•
“Ladies, are you the pawns of your
advertising managers? Is your food section
just a form of promotional device, or are you
journalists?”
“Whores of the supermarket”

9. Columbia Journalism Review
•
•
“Newspaper Food Pages: Credibility for
Sale”
“The food section is the cash register of the
newspaper, a happy hunting ground for a
advertisers.”

10. Food Editors’ Response
•
•
•
•
E&P
Matrix
Houston Meeting of Food Editors
Led to AFJ

11. Gastronomica
Examined
several
years of
meetings.

12. The Food Section
Looked at
most of the
meetings.

13. Meeting Coverage
•
•
•
•
Each year examined:1950-1970
125-150 attended
Week-long event by food advertisers
Newspaper paid for airfare & hotel

14. Food Editors’ Meeting
Clarice Rowlands: “Although eating foods, simple and
fancy, occupies a lot of the 16-hour days, we are busy,
too, attending demonstrations, listening to speeches and
panels on new developments in the food field and
visiting test kitchens. With notebooks in hand, we are
constantly taking notes to pass on food news to readers
now and after we return home. Our typewriters are
clicking late into the night.”

15. Tasting = Work
•
James M. Kahn: “Hardest working bunch of
newspaper people I’ve ever seen – can’t
imagine men doing this.”

16. Tasting = Work
Janet Beighe: “Our long, long, calorific days involved
listening to food manufacturer’s spiels, and sampling
frequently awful recipes, featuring old and new products,
ad nauseum. Between three huge meals, we would be
expected to run a gauntlet of samplings. I added up the
calories in one dinner and described it. It topped out well
over 3,000 calories. I got sick that night.”

17. Important Speakers
•
•
•
•
Frederick Stare, the head of the Department of Nutrition
at Harvard University
U.S. agriculture secretary, Orville Freeman, discuss
advances in production
Rep. Catherine May who was a member of the
President’s Commission on Food Marketing
Jean Mayer, a nutrition consultant to President Richard
Nixon

18. Important Topics
•
•
•
1962: Cholesterol explained and included
pronunciation: “ko-less-ter-all”
1964: “get active, eat less, and cut back on
their salt intake”
1969: lack of nutrition in American diets

19. New Products & Recipes: 1966
•
•
•
•
•
the first lemons ever grown in Florida,
a self-basting turkey,
fish fillets with a crunchy coating that tasted deep fried
but were not,
a revolutionary “quick thaw” allowed fruit cups to go
from freezer to table in seven minutes,
a new kind of pouch that allowed cabbage to be cooked
without smelling up the house

20. Some Snark
•
•
•
“Bitters for breakfast?”
“I hope he chokes on it.”
“It sounds like public relations.”

21. Networking
•
•
•
Quoted each other in stories
Compared regional trends
Later they traveled extensively

22. What’s Next
•
•
•
Examination of home economics journalism
What was being taught?
Looking at curriculum, yearbooks and
student publications at Iowa State and
Arizona State