Newspapers' transition from women's to style pages

Abstract

After nearly a century of publishing explicitly named women's pages, US newspapers starting in 1969 and into the 1970s began renaming them ‘style’ or ‘lifestyle’ sections, theoretically meaning they were for a general audience. This research investigates industry discourse during this time to determine what those in newsrooms were thinking about this transition. Seventy-two articles from three newspaper trade publications from 1969 through 1975 reveal that editors and reporters were most concerned with including serious content in these sections and unconcerned with the names of the sections. In fact the women editors of these style pages, who dominated the discourse, indicated that even after renaming the sections industry insiders thought of them as for and about women. The analysis also revealed that newsroom constraints, particularly those placed on lower level staff by male editors, prevented women editors of these women's/style sections from constructing the pages they desired.