Editor's Note

The women's pages of newspapers have a rich history, but they took on a new significance starting after World War II as women's roles began changing. Two articles in this issue examine the recent history of news aimed at women. Purely by coincidence, the titles of both begin with the words, “More Than.” Kimberly Voss and Lance Speere studied the women's pages of the Milwaukee Journal and found that the staff in the 1950s and 1960s focused on feminism in addition to the usual stories about food, family, fashion, and furnishings, often dismissed as the Four F's. In doing so, the Journal was one of a small number of newspapers during the era with progressive women's sections, led by editors finding their own ways to redefine women's roles. Barbara Freeman looked at how the Canadian Press struggled with how to share women's news to its member newspapers. The news agency's leaders and newspaper editors disagreed about the value of news aimed at women, and often the disagreements were regional.

Richard A. Fine writes about Associated Press correspondent Edward Kennedy, who is best known for breaking the news of Germany's surrender in World War II. Although historians have generally considered the controversial move a rare instance of a journalist defying censorship, Kennedy's career reveals just how tense relations between the military and the media actually were during the “Good War.” Nicole C. Livengood explores the abortion narrative of George Washington Dixon's Polyanthos in the 1830s. The prosecution successfully used the newspaper's accounts to convict abortionist Madame Restell in the death of a pregnant woman, showing how the narrative appealed to white, middle-class men in Jacksonian-era New York.

Scholars who study the history of radio understand the challenges of documenting the medium. In “Professional Notes,” Noah Arceneaux, who has written about the evolution of radio and other new technologies, urges historians interested in radio not to despair. Online archives preserve numerous recordings and make them easily accessible. Moreover, using other primary and secondary sources, it is possible to compile accounts of important moments in radio history without recordings. Even in the online, on-demand digital era we are living in today, radio history has a continued relevance, he writes.