Situation Report

JOURNALISM, unlike most professions, has had a large women's contingent for many years. The catch from the women's viewpoint is that few of them are in prominent positions either as reporters or editors. The overwhelming majority of women journalists are still found on weeklies and the smaller dailies, where salaries are generally low, and on newspaper women's pages and magazines with predominantly female readership. Some big news organizations have begun to shop actively for female recruits, but the search goes slowly. No network news operation and no large publication aimed at a general audience is headed by a woman. Women commentators, broadcast producers, columnists and foreign correspondents remain relative rarities. Not that the talent pool is small. Last year 44% of U.S. journalism school students were women, up from 35% in 1951.

NEWSPAPERS AND WIRE SERVICES. Among all American newspapers, women now account for 35% of editorial personnel, roughly the same as in 1950. However, the proportions vary widely. The Associated Press, with a U.S. news staff of 1,050, has 112 women, and two are bureau managers. United Press International employs 900 and only 81 are women, but seven of them are bureau managers and one a general-news editor in Manhattan. The New York Times has 626 editors, reporters, copy readers and desk people; 64 are women. For the Washington Post, the figure is 70 out of 385; San Francisco Chronicle, 36 out of 147; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 23 out of 206; Chicago Tribune, 52 out of 373; Los Angeles Times, 50 out of 417. As they do on many newspapers, all but a handful of the L.A. Times women work for feature sections, and the paper's six women editors are all assigned to women's news, food, fashion or television.

MAGAZINES. The periodicals hire more women than do newspapers. Magazine publishers reported to the Government this year a total of 5,941 "professional" employees, of whom 2,667, or 45%, were women. Yet most of these women work for women's magazines or hold jobs below the writer-correspondent categories. TIME has one woman senior editor and six writers and six correspondents; LIFE, nine writers and six correspondents; Newsweek, six writers and 14 correspondents; U.S. News & World Report, two writers and four correspondents.

BROADCASTING. Women fare little better on TV and radio news. Although seen more and more as broadcast reporters, they are generally on local rather than network programs. ABC-TV has only one woman among 43 network correspondents, NBC five out of 54, and CBS one out of 56.

The institutional parts of journalism have also been slow to change. This year, in a belated gesture, the Pulitzer Prize journalism jurors will include women for the first time--six of them out of 45. Two years ago, Sigma Delta Chi, the 63-year-old national journalism society, invited women to join, and so far about 3,000 have signed on. Fourteen months later the National Press Club in Washington, after much external protest and internal agonizing, admitted women for the first time since the club was founded in 1908. But the Gridiron Club, which fancies itself the most distinguished assemblage of journalists in the nation, has wavered only ever so slightly. It has agreed to invite 13 women guests to its annual dinner, while the membership of the 87-year-old group will remain all male--at least for the time being.

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