Marjorie Paxson (August 13, 1923 – June 17, 2017) was an American newspaper journalist, editor, and publisher during an era in American history when the women's liberation movement was setting milestones by tackling the barriers of discrimination in the media workplace. Paxson graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1944, and began her newspaper career in Nebraska during World War II, covering hard news for wire services. In the 1960s, Paxson worked as assistant editor under Marie Anderson for the women's page of the Miami Herald which, in the 1950s, was considered one of the top women's sections in the United States. From 1963 to 1967, she was president of Theta Sigma Phi, a sorority that evolved into the Association for Women in Communications (AWC). She won the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into its hall of fame. In 1969, she earned a Penney-Missouri award for her work as editor of the women's page in the St. Petersburg Times.
Throughout her career, Paxson advocated for working women and for women in journalism. She worked at several different newspapers for different reasons that ranged from being replaced by men returning from the war, to seizing opportunities that afforded her the ability to make positive hard news changes to the women's section. She experienced two demotions as newspapers changed their women's sections into features sections and replaced female editors with male editors. She expressed bitterness over her demotions and attributed them partially to the women's movement. She believed feminist activists unfairly denigrated women's pages and their editors, who she believed had been supporters of the movement.
Paxson worked as editor of women's pages in Houston, Miami, Philadelphia; and in Boise, Idaho, as an assistant managing editor. While working as women's page editor for the Philadelphia Bulletin, she took a five-week leave of absence to edit Xilonen, the daily newspaper of the 1975 United Nations World Conference for International Women's Year in Mexico City. She considered her time there to be the most important work of her career. As a result of that work, she was honored with the AWC's Headliner Award. She helped create the National Women and Media Collection, which documents media coverage of and by women in the United States. She was one of four women's page journalists selected to participate in the Washington Press Foundation's Women in Journalism Oral History Project. After more than four decades of working to reshape the definition of women's news, Paxson finished her career as a newspaper publisher in Oklahoma.
Early life Marjorie Bowers Paxson was born August 13, 1923, in Houston, Texas, to Roland B. and Marie Margaret (Bowers) Paxson, who had moved to Houston from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where both had grown up. She had one younger brother, John. Her father was a petroleum geologist and her mother had attended a secretarial school but discontinued working after she married. According to Paxson, as children she and her brother visited the derrick floors on the oil fields her father worked, but when she got to high school age she was no longer allowed on the derrick floors because while children were welcome, women were not.
Paxson attended Lamar High School in Houston's Upper Kirby district. She was uninterested in nursing or teaching, then the most common professions open to women, and became involved in journalism while taking a class in high school and writing for her school's newspaper. Her journalism teacher had graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and Paxson decided she wanted to go to the school he had attended.
Paxson's parents aspired to a college education for both their children. In accordance with her parents' wishes that she attend her first two years of college close to home, she applied to Rice University, which was only a mile away. She was concerned about whether she would get into Rice, which at the time limited its freshman class to ten percent women. She was admitted and under an endowment attended tuition-free; she recalled her family paying $200 per year for her to attend Rice. While at Rice she worked on the student newspaper, The Thresher.
In 1942 Paxson transferred to the University of Missouri for her junior year; within a few weeks, most of her male classmates were drafted for World War II. During her time at the university, the dean of the school of journalism was Frank Luther Mott, whom she admired but thought of as "sort of a stuffy character" until on New Year's Day during class he staged an attempted murder of himself, giving the class the assignment to write about the incident. She worked for the university's student newspaper, Columbia Missourian, and graduated from its journalism school in 1944.
Career After graduating from college Paxson considered joining the military but ultimately decided to look for a job in journalism. She credited her work at the Columbia Missourian with helping her get her first job at United Press International (UPI) wire service.
Wire services Like many women in the United States, during World War II Paxson was considered for jobs previously limited to men. Starting in 1944 she covered hard news for the wire services, first for UPI in the two-person Lincoln, Nebraska, bureau for $25 a week. This represented equal pay because it was covered by the American Newspaper Guild contract. With the men away fighting, one in five of UPI's employees was a woman. Paxson and the Lincoln bureau manager, Marguerite Davis, reported all state news with the exception of football games, as women were excluded from Nebraska Stadium's press box, and executions, which the state bureau chief, Gaylord Godwin, considered inappropriate for coverage by women. While covering the Nebraska Supreme Court, Paxson experienced sexual harassment by the court clerk. She later recalled this as a common issue for working women, and that her strategy was to keep visits to his office brief, keep the desk between them, and "if he started to come around the desk, you picked up those opinions and left."
Paxson worked for UPI for two years, until 1946. Having signed a waiver agreeing to quit when the war was over, she learned was losing her job. The week she was fired she moved to the Associated Press (AP), in Omaha, Nebraska, to edit radio wire copy for $55 a week. She worked for the AP for two years, then in 1948 moved back to Texas, where she started working in women's pages, which were the only journalism positions open to most women both before and after the war.
Editor Paxson was hired in 1948 at age 25 as the society editor for the Houston Post, then considered more progressive than the Houston Chronicle, its primary competitor. She was one of a staff of five in the women's section and earned a salary of $75 per week. Houston's oil-boom economy meant she needed to cover many high-profile social events. Paxson recalled that during this period she had 14 evening dresses, most of them sewn by her mother. On a typical Friday she worked all day, covered a party in the evening, returned to the office to file a piece on the event, and got home at 3:00 in the morning. During her time in Houston Paxson lived with her parents, as her parents believed a single woman should not be living in an apartment.
Paxson was promoted from society editor to women's page editor in 1951. She attempted to cover hard news but was told by the news editor that he would never allow a news story to be covered in the women's section. She moved pictures of brides off the women's section's front page, where most newspapers always ran them, in favor of issue-oriented stories; she later recalled accomplishing this in late 1951 or early 1952. She considered this one of her major accomplishments at the paper; at one point she had to explain to the paper's de facto publisher, Oveta Culp Hobby, that she would not run a wedding photo of the daughter of one of Hobby's friends on the front of the section. Paxson said that once she had been given the explanation, Hobby backed Paxson up. She later recalled the strict order of ranking based on family social prominence used to determine how much column space a wedding announcement was given; the most prominent brides received two columns and the least prominent were covered three in two columns.
In 1952 Paxson became women's editor at the Houston Chronicle for $100 a week, but while she supervised a staff of seven, she was not given hiring and firing authority. While at the Chronicle she published the first photos of black brides in a major Houston newspaper and convinced her managing editor to take a chance on the then little-known advice columnist Ann Landers. By the mid-1950s she began covering issues affecting working women and other serious news.
Paxson was hired as a copy editor in 1956 by Dorothy Jurney, the women's page editor for the Miami Herald, then considered one of the top women's sections in the country. She was mentored in her new position by Jurney and assistant women's editor Marie Anderson and worked alongside Roberta Applegate and Jeanne Voltz. The department's managing editors included Al Neuharth and Lee Hills. When Jurney moved to the Detroit Free Press in 1959, Anderson took her place as women's page editor and Paxson was promoted to assistant women's editor. Over the next several years they campaigned to include stories on women's issues such as birth control and the women's movement. During Anderson and Paxson's tenure, the women's section of the Herald won so many Penney-Missouri Awards, widely seen as the highest awards for women's page journalism, that the organizers asked the paper to retire from the competition. Paxson worked at the Herald for 12 years; her ending salary was $9,000 per year.
Paxson moved to the St. Petersburg Times, known for its progressive content, to become its women's editor in 1968 at a salary of $13,000 per year. Although she had a staff of seven, all women, she could not make hiring, firing, or budget decisions; this was common among women's page editors during this period. In 1970, following the lead of other major newspapers which were changing their women's sections into features sections, the paper eliminated their women's section, and Paxson was demoted to assistant features editor. Shortly thereafter she learned she had won a 1969 Penney-Missouri Award for her work on the paper's then-defunct women's section. This was an embarrassment to the paper's management, and when shortly thereafter they discovered she was looking for a new job, they fired her. She was hired as women's page editor by the Philadelphia Bulletin the same year, with a staff of 15. In 1973 the paper eliminated its women's section in favor of a features section, and Paxson was again demoted. She was made associate editor of the paper's Sunday magazine, where her assigned tasks were primarily reading page proofs. Paxson called the time she spent on the magazine "the worst fourteen months of my life." She was made assistant metropolitan editor in 1974, with a staff of 18 but still no personnel authority or budget control. When faced with a decision whether to send a fashion editor to Paris, she told her manager she could make a better decision if she knew the department's budget. His response was, "Aren't you glad you don't have to worry your pretty head about things like that?"