Dorothy Fuldheim: An Exception to (All) The Rules

Women reporters faced a new kind of journalism after World War II. The long-standing prejudice against women newscasters in radio* was even more pronounced in the newly developing world of television—and would remain so for decades.** There is always an exception. Dorothy Fuldheim (1893-1989), a retired schoolteacher who was born the same year as Sigrid…

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May Craig: “Tough as a Lobster”

May Craig (1889-1975) spent most of her career as the Washington correspondent for the Maine-based Gannet newspaper chain. She provided her Maine readers with a keen-eyed and sharp-tongued look at the nation’s capital in her “Inside Washington” column for some forty years. She was the first woman to attend Franklin Roosevelt’s press briefings, an original…

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A different path to being a war correspondent aka the woman on the spot

The Great War provided new opportunities for women journalists.* No women received official press accreditation with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during World War I, but a number of female journalists reached the front as “visiting correspondents.” Soon after the war began, the Saturday Evening Post, which had the largest circulation of any American magazine…

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