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Cairns, Kathleen A. Front-Page Women Journalists, 1920-1950. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. 171 pp. $45.
Once upon a time, women who worked at newspapers were of two basic varieties: those who covered food, fashion, and society for the women's pages, or sob sisters who drenched every story in overwrought emotion. Newsrooms were effectively closed to women who sought to cover the serious stuff: crime, politics, international affairs, poverty, or discrimination. The few who broke through to be "front page" journalists lived dual lives, playing the demure, subordinate feminine roles dictated by society while besting men in the profane, rough-and-tumble, super-competitive newspaper racket.
In Front-Page Women Journalists, 1920-1950, Kathleen A. Cairns focuses on three such women: Ruth Finney (1898-1979), a Washington, D.C., political reporter for the Scripps Howard News Alliance who was, in 1931, the first woman nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Charlotta Bass (1874?-1969), editor of the California Eagle and a tireless activist for racial justice; and Agness Underwood (1902-1984), a crime reporter and, in 1947, the first woman city editor of a major metropolitan daily, the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express....