Oregon Exchanges
For the Newspapermen of the State of Oregon
Breaking the Ice into Journalism
A Review of the Newspaper Situation Since Women Have Been Taking Their Places in the Profession.
By Miriam Page
Women have long been hammering at the insurmountable barrier of ice that has separated them from newspaperdom. Just recently this barrier has given away, and women are eagerly swarming through the gap to take their places in every phase of newspaper work. We see a woman over the top of the editor’s desk wielding with confidence the pen which her predecessor abandoned for the sword. We find her taking up the duties of the advertising manager, who is now computing the distance from one side of No Man’s Land to the other. Armed with a pair of shears, she slashes the telegraph news, impersonating the man who is now practicing his art on a more deserving foe. As reporter she fills the gap left by the young chap that now reports to a superior officer on the western front. And she has not been loath to take the place of the paper carrier just gone to a new job in the shipyards.
In our own state this condition is well exemplified, for newspaper staffs whose only feminine member a year ago was the society editor, now show two or three names prefixed by Miss or Mrs.
Letters to a number of these Oregon newspaper women brought responses full of confidence, determination and that push and enthusiasm which bespeak success. Each of them is well worth printing in full as a separate article under its own signature, and the difficulty in compiling them is one of selecting the best out of an abundance of good.
Vella Winner Encourages Women.
Miss Vella Winner, women’s clubs editor for the Oregon Journal, paints a true picture of conditions as they are, and sounds the note of encouragement to all conscientious women journalists. She says:
“That old line, ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ is splendidly exemplified in the depletion of the staffs of the newspapers of this country and their subsequent filling with women—all a result of the terrible world war. The struggle that women have had against that most terrible of odds, the prejudice of editors against women, based on ignorance, jealousy and a narrowness of vision that blinded them to the fact that women have just as good
