More Than “Little Old Ladies Going Gliding”: The Canadian Press and Women's Interest News

Abstract

During the 1960s to the 1990s, the Canadian Press (CP) news agency struggled with how to share news of interest to female readers with its member newspapers. CP's senior news managers and their newspaper colleagues across Canada disagreed about the journalistic value of gendered content, or even how to define it, depending on their own newsroom cultures as well as their understanding of the preferences of readers in their regions. The news agency's internal documents and interviews with editors reveal that regional differences among editors and audiences had a great influence on how these production changes were received at CP's member newspapers and whether they considered women's issues and interests “hard” news, “soft” news, or of no consequence at all.

Notes

Jeri Dawn Wine and Janice L. Ristock, Women and Social Change: Feminist Activism in Canada (James Lorimer, 1991); Ruth Roach Pierson et al., Canadian Women's Issues, Volume 1, Strong Voices: Twenty-five Years of Women's Activism in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1993); Ruth Roach Pierson and Marjorie Cohen, Canadian Women's Issues, Volume II, Bold Visions (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1995); Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The History of the Women's Movement in America since 1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

Kimberly Wilmot Voss, “Dorothy Jurney: A National Advocate for Women's Pages as They Evolved and Then Disappeared,” Journalism History 36, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 13–22; Voss, “Vivian Castleberry: An Editor ahead of Her Time,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 110, no. 4 (2007): 514--532; Voss, “The Penney-Missouri Awards: Honoring the Best in Women's News,” Journalism History 32, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 43–50.

Dustin Harp, “Gendering and Selling the News Audience in a Digital Age,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender, ed. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner, and Lisa McLaughlin (New York: Routledge, 2014), 430–439; Harp, Desperately Seeking Women Readers: US Newspapers and the Construction of a Female Readership (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); Harp, “Newspapers’ Transition from Women's to Style Pages: What Were They Thinking?” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 7, no. 2 (2006): 197–216.

Harriet Engel Gross and Sharyne Merritt, “Effect of Social/Organizational Context on Gatekeeping in Lifestyle Pages,” Journalism Quarterly 53, no. 3 (1981): 420–427.

For the most recent Canadian historiography, see Gene Allen and Daniel J. Robinson, introduction to Communicating in Canada's Past: Essays in Media History, ed. Gene Allen and Daniel Robinson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 3–25; Fernande Roy, “Recent Trends in Research on the History of the Press in Quebec: Towards a Cultural History,” in Allen and Robinson, Communicating in Canada's Past, 257–270. See also Gertrude J. Robinson, Gender, Journalism and Equity: Canadian, US and European Perspectives (Crestkill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005); Vivian Smith, Outsiders Still: Why Women Journalists Love—and Leave—Their Newspaper Careers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). Patricia Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963–1975 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003); Barbara M. Freeman, The Satellite Sex: The Media and Women's Issues in English Canada, 1966–1971 (Kitchener-Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001); Kaitlynn Mendes, Feminism in the News: Representations of the Women's Movement Since the 1960s (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

See, for example, Patricia Bradley, Women and the Press, with a foreword by Gail Collins (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005); Marjory Lang, Women Who Made the News: Female Journalists in Canada 1880–1945 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999).

Barbara M. Freeman, “Breaking Out of the Glass Cage: Women Newspaper Journalists in Canada, 1945–1975” in Modern Canada: 1945 to the Present, ed. Catherine Briggs (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2013), 426–438.

Barbara M. Freeman, Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women's Rights in Canada (Kitchener-Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011), 123–156; Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 77–103; Voss, “Dorothy Jurney,” 13–14.

Voss, “Vivian Castleberry,” 526; Voss, “The Penney-Missouri Awards,” 43–44.

Wilfrid H. Kesterton, A History of Journalism in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 146. Canadian Press, “Working Wives Supported,” Ottawa (ON) Citizen, August 11, 1969, 30; Canadian Press, “Working Mothers—Stay-home Outmoded,” Ottawa Citizen, August 14, 1969, 4.

Freeman, “Breaking Out of the Glass Cage,” 429–432; Harp, “Newspapers’ Transition from Women's to Style Pages,” 197.

Kesterton, A History of Journalism in Canada, 147–152; Eleanor Wright Pelrine, “Whatchamacallit and Why,” in “Women in the Canadian News Media,” special edition of content, May 1978, 9. The byline used only initials for the following article: K.P., “The Lifestyle of Women's Pages: Calling them People, Family, Living and You,” in “Women in the Canadian News Media,” special edition of content, May 1978, 10–11.

Author's private collection, the author interviews with Jean Sharp Cochrane and Judy Creighton, both in Toronto on August 17, 1995; and with Patti Tasko, May 26, 2014. The author also conducted oral history interviews with four former Canadian Press staff members who worked for CP for only a few years and were not specifically assigned to report or edit women's interest news on a regular basis. The author interviews with Norma Greenaway, Ottawa, August 17, 2012; Elinor Reading, Toronto, August 17, 1995; Anne Roberts, Vancouver, by telephone, May 24, 2006; and Rosemary Speirs, Toronto, December 15, 1992 and Toronto, November 17, 2011. The author has conducted an additional twenty-eight interviews with women and a few men who worked with other news media. In time, all these interviews will all be deposited at the Canadian Women's Movement Archives, University of Ottawa.

These documents were internal CP administrative documents that Tasko kept in her office. She allowed the author to make copies of them. Hereafter, they are referred to as Canadian Press Documents (CPD).

Sharp Cochrane, interview with the author.

CPD, CP Ontario Regional Meeting minutes, June 18, 1976, attendance record, 2.

For a discussion of CP's history between 1945 and 1970, see Allen, Making National New, 183–254.

Robinson. Gender, Journalism and Equity, 24. Between 1968 and 1996, the number of newspapers affiliated with CP varied between 87 and 106. Allen, Making National News, 296; “CP Buys UPC, leaves nation one wire service,” Toronto Star, January 16, 1985, A2; Harvey Enchin, “News Service Sold to Rival,” Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON), January 16, 1985, 9; Chris Cobb, “Canadian Press Scrambles to Survive,” Hamilton (ON) Spectator, June 29, 1996, C8; Canadian Press News Wire, “National News Agency to Survive: With Changes,” August 21, 1996. Wire feed from Canadian Press Enterprises, Toronto. ProQuest document ID 359625210, http://proxy.library.carleton.ca/login?url = http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.carleton.ca/docview/359625210?accountid = 9894 (accessed June 9, 2016).

CP statistics were calculated from the following: the Ottawa Bureau of the Globe and Mail, “CP Head Denies Discrimination against Admitting New Members,” Globe and Mail, December 11, 1969, 8; CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, May 29, 1970, 9; John Marshall, “Chains Don't Control News Service, Probe Told,” Globe and Mail, April 17, 1981, 8; CPD, report of the CP News Study Committee, Spring 1995, 3; Annita Newell, “Facing the Barriers: Women at CP-BN. A Study by Annita Newell for the Canadian Media Guild,” May 1997, 1, copy provided to the author by Annita Newell. For statistics on female newspaper journalists in Canada and the United States, see Robinson, Gender, Journalism and Equity, 21–52.

Smith, Outsiders Still, 51.

Allen, Making National News, 10, 247, 266–269, 277–27; Kesterton, A History of Journalism in Canada, 84–117.

CP Style Book: A Guide for Writers and Filing Editors (Toronto: Canadian Press, 1968), 20–21; CP Style Book (Toronto: Canadian Press, 1974), 3.

Allen, Making National News, 226–228, 307.

Ibid., 282–284.

Freeman, Beyond Bylines, 123–156.

Sharp Cochrane, interview with the author.

It was CP's women journalists who were expected to help Sharp; the men were not mentioned. CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, June 6, 1969, 6–7.

Jean Sharp, “Hem Not All—Old Styles Come Back with a Difference,” Ottawa Citizen, August 2, 1969, 39.

Freeman, The Satellite Sex, 19–39.

See, for example, Jean Sharp, “Many Women Made the News in 1970,” Toronto Daily Star, December 29, 1970, Section 4, 45; Jean Sharp (CP), “CNA Seeks Changes; Passes Resolutions,” Globe and Mail, June 20, 1964, 15; Jean Sharp (CP), “Institute Panel Decides Home Woman's Role,” Globe and Mail, June 24, 1964, 10; Jean Sharp (CP), “Thinning Ranks Concern Clubs,” Winnipeg (MB) Free Press, August 13, 1968, 14.

Sharp Cochrane, interview with the author.

Nancy Adamson, “Feminists, Libbers, Lefties and Radicals: The Emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement,” in A Diversity of Women: Ontario 1945–1980, ed. Joy Parr (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 252–280.

Sharp Cochrane, interview with the author.

Freeman, The Satellite Sex, 49–50; Sharp Cochrane, interview with the author; Speirs, interview with the author 1995.

CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, June 7, 1968, 7.

Paul Litt, “Trudeaumania: Participatory Democracy in the Mass-mediated Nation,” Canadian Historical Review 89, no. 1 (March 2008): 27–53.

Statistics from CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, June 6, 1969, 6–7. Examples of women's rights stories include Elinor Reading, “National Council: Rejects Family Unit for Taxes,” London Free Press, June 7, 1968, 26; Rosemary Speirs, “Press Women Attack Employment Restriction,” London Free Press, June 8, 1968, Section 3, 22.

CPD, CP Central Circuit regional meeting minutes, June 6, 1969, 7. On the student movement, see Roberta Lexier, “To Struggle Together or Fracture Apart: The Sixties Student Movements at English-Canadian Universities,” in Debating Dissent: Canada and the 1960s, ed. Gregory S. Kealey, Lara Campbell and Dominique Clément (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 81–96. On Bieler, see Caroline Brettell, Writing against the Wind: A Mother's Life Story (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999).

CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, May 29, 1970, 8–9.

Marney Roe sent out fifty-seven surveys to the daily newspapers; thirty-six were returned to her for analysis. “Women's Page Questionnaire Indicates New Trends,” Newspacket, Canadian Women's Press Club, April 1970, 4.

CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, June 7, 1971, 9–10.

CPD, CP Central Circuit Regional Meeting minutes, May 12, 1972, 7; Jean Sharp (CP), “Cross-country Study Shows VD Increase,” Globe and Mail, June 4, 1973, 13.

Under her married name, Jean Cochrane went on to work with the Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario. Sharp Cochrane, interview with the author.

CPD, CP Central Circuit Meeting minutes, June 7, 1974, 8.

Newspaper journalists based some of these stories on CP reports, or they were carried with a CP byline. Canadian Press, “Stop Bitching at Critics, Women Told,” Globe and Mail, July 3, 1975, F4; Canadian Press, “Status Council Figures Look Back at IWY with Mixed Feelings about Accomplishment,” Globe and Mail, December 20, 1975, 12.

Creighton, interview with the author. Creighton's appointment date as Family Editor, March 7 1976, is noted in the CPD, CP Ontario Regional Meeting minutes, June 18, 1976, 8. This date corrects Creighton's recollection of being hired in 1975, as quoted in Freeman, “Breaking out of the Glass Cage,” 432.

Creighton, interview with the author.

Compare, for example, the engagement and wedding announcements, social notes, recipes, and fashions that predominated in “Women's News,” Ottawa Journal, August 14, 1969, 22–29 as well as the “Living” section, Ottawa Journal, May 7, 1977, 22–25. The rival Ottawa Citizen similarly changed its terminology. See the “Women's Pages,” Ottawa Citizen, August 13, 1968, 30–31 and the “Lifestyles” section, Ottawa Citizen, May 4, 1977, 83–85. An article on women in the federal public service was published on one of the news pages that day. “Women Remain Low on PS Wage Ladder,” Ottawa Citizen, May 4, 1977, 49.

The editors of content editors had asked 119 Canadian dailies if they ran special pages for news “of interest to women” at least once a week. Of the thirty-six papers that responded, thirty said yes and sent in the logos for those pages. K.P, “The Lifestyle of Women's Pages, 10–11.

Ibid., 11.

Pelrine, “Whatchamacallit and Why,” 8.

Ibid., 9.

CPD, CP Ontario Regional Meeting, 18 June 1976, 8; CPD, CP Atlantic News Study Committee Meeting minutes, March 20, 1978, 4–5; Creighton, interview with the author; Katie Malloch, Women in the Canadian Media (Montreal: McGill University, 1973), 31.

Creighton, interview with the author.

CPD, CP Atlantic Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, May 13, 1977, 1–5; CPD, CP Ontario Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, Toronto, October 28, 1977, 1–3; CPD, CP Central Circuit Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, June 8, 1978, 1–3.

CPD, CP Atlantic Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, May 13, 1977, 1.

See, for example. Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton, eds., Making Up the State: Women in 20th-Century Atlantic Canada (Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis, 2010). See, for example, Doris Saunders, “Family Is Her World,” Chronicle-Herald (Halifax, NS), May 28, 1977, 11; Betty O’Brien, “Beginnings in Small Town Led to Sophisticated Life,” Chronicle-Herald, May 14, 1977, 11.

Judy Creighton, “Conference Told—Traditional Family Models Gone”, Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, NB), May 17, 1977, 8; Ellie Tesher, Toronto Star, “Positive Effects Noted—Women's Movement Has Bred Fighting Machine,” Telegraph-Journal, May 30, 1977, 8.

See, for example, “Women” page, Charlottetown Guardian, May 2, 1977, 6; Canadian Press, “Widow Raises Children, Runs 148-Acre Farm,” Charlottetown Guardian, May 17, 1977, 6; Jan Outcalt, “No Discipline Problem Here—Teacher Is Part of Family,” Charlottetown Guardian, May 28, 1977, 6.

Canadian Press, “Liberated Women Not Responsible for Increased Impotence in Men,” Evening Telegram (St. John's, NL), May 4, 1977, 24.

CPD, CP Atlantic Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, May 13, 1977, 1.

Ibid., 2.

Ibid., 2–3.

Ibid., 3. For an overview of the NAC and its provincial affiliates, see Jill Vickers, Pauline Rankin, and Christine Appelle, Politics as if Women Mattered (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

CPD, CP Atlantic Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, May 13, 1977, 4–5.

“Food Basket Climbs in April to 4-year High,” Globe and Mail, May 2, 1977, 14.

See, for example, “Governments Move Slowly: Women May Have Long Wait for Equality Survey Finds,” Globe and Mail, October 22, 1976, 14.

CPD, CP Ontario Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, October 28, 1977, 2.

Ibid., 3. Raeside cited in K.P., “The Lifestyle of Women's Pages,” 11; Malloch, citing a short study of the Montreal Star's Lifestyle pages by McGill sociology student Deborah Bercusson in “Women in the Canadian Media,” 33–36.

The culture and politics of Alberta are so described in the Canadian Encyclopedia online, last modified February 10, 2016, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/alberta/ (accessed April 12, 2016).

CPD, CP Alberta Editors Meeting minutes, February 2, 1978, 5. Canadian Press, “Marriage Bills May Bring Law Reform,” Lethbridge (AB) Herald, February 11, 1978, 17; Canadian Press, “Women Find Assembly Line beyond Grasp,” Lethbridge Herald, February 9, 1978, 20; Canadian Press, “Women Should Submit, Author Says,” Lethbridge Herald, May 9, 1978, 17; Canadian Press, “Survey Says Pill Remains the Best Contraceptive,” Lethbridge Herald, September 16, 1978, 12.

CPD, CP Alberta Editors Meeting minutes, February 2, 1978, 5; Harry Midgley, “The Edmonton Journal: Soothing along with Southam,” in Canadian Newspapers: The Inside Story, ed. Walter Stewart (Edmonton, AB: Hurtig, 1980), 157–169.

See, for example, Don Sellar, Southam News Services, “Rape Reforms Called Mere Fog,” Edmonton Journal, May 17, 1978, A9; Nicholas Hills, Southam News Services, “Women's Vote Holds Balance of Political Power in Britain,” Calgary Herald, 11 May 1978, C2. CP stories included CP (Vancouver), “Women Sample Delights of Sales Careers,” Calgary Herald, May 20, 1978, B4, which appeared in the Edmonton Journal's Lifestyle section as CP, “Travelling Saleswomen Are No Joke,” Edmonton Journal, May 18, 1978, C1.

CPD, CP Atlantic Family-page Editors Meeting minutes, May 13, 1977, 1.

CPD, CP BC Editors Meeting minutes, May 12, 1978, 5.

Canadian Press, “1977 Showed Progress, Setbacks in Women's Rights,” Lethbridge Herald, December 24, 1977, 15; Judy Creighton, “Ontario Made the Most Progress in Reforming Family Law This Year,” Toronto Star, December 30, 1978, F3; Canadian Press (Ottawa), “Sex Law Change Rated Inadequate,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), May 3, 1978, 15.

CPD, CP Eastern Regional Meeting minutes, June 3, 1977, 9–10; CP Atlantic News Study Committee Meeting minutes, March 20, 1978, 4–5. CP Eastern Regional Meeting minutes, comments of CP's John Dauphinee, June 2, 1978, 10.

CPD, CP Datafiles Lifestyles study, May 13, 1983.

This lifestyles memo is unsigned and undated, but Sauvé took office in the spring of 1984 after an illness. Canadian Press, “Illness over, Sauvé Ready for New Job,” Globe and Mail, May 14, 1984, 1–2. Similar comments about equal pay for work of equal value and pornography as news issues, including one from the senior supervising editor, Peter Buckley, appeared in the CPD, CP Datafile Members Annual Meeting minutes, June 22, 1984, as well as in a miscellaneously Datafile document from the same year, which referred to these women's issues as the “most persistent” ones.”

CPD, CP Datafile notes, July 8, 1985, 6.

Creighton, interview with the author. See, for example, Judy Creighton, “Hubby's Retirement Hard on Wife,” Ottawa Citizen, July 24, 1986, F12; Judy Creighton (CP), “Book Takes Practical Look at Death,” Toronto Star, December 13, 1986, E6; Judy Creighton (CP), “Superstore Idea Caught on as Gasoline Prices Rose,” Globe and Mail, June 4, 1986, E6.

Tasko, interview with the author, 2014; Patti Tasko, “Sharing the Pleasures while Sharing the Job,” Ottawa Citizen, June 1, 1987, D6; Patti Tasko, “Secretaries Pool One Job for Two,” Toronto Star, May 29, 1987, F 1.

At the time, female readership in Canada was decreasing. About 63 percent of women read newspapers, a 20 percent drop since 1968. Anita Dubey, “A Woman's Place is in the News: The Women's Pages Are Back. But Are the Women?” Ryerson Review of Journalism, March 1983, accessed April 12, 2016, http://rrj.ca/a-womans-place-in-the-news/; CPD, Canadian Press, Spring Meeting, Toronto, 1992, Jim Poling, “Editorial Report,” 1–2. An estimated 80 percent of newspapers’ revenue came from advertising, much of it local, which declined by 27 percent between 1990 and 1995, according to Mary Vipond, The Mass Media in Canada, 3rd ed. (Toronto: James Lorimer, 2000), 60. On the effects of the anti-feminist backlash, see Judy Rebick, Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005), 221–235.

CPD, Marlene Habib, “The CP Lifestyles Report,” February, 1990.

Dubey, “A Woman's Place Is in the News”; Therese L. Lueck and Huayan Chang, “Tribune's ‘WomanNews’ Gives Voice to Women's Issues,” Newspaper Research Journal 23, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 59–72.