KIMBERLY WILMQT VOSS The Penney-Missoufi Awards Honoring the Best in Women's News This article examines the Penney-Missouri Awards competition, which was meant to raise the standards of women's pages by recognising the sections that went bejond traditional content. Using interviews to look at the competition's history as well as framing analysis to examine the content of winning submissions, the study'sfindings over the period from 1960 to 1971 support a revision in the history of women's pages. While traditional women's pagesfilled with society, home, and wedding news appeared in manj newspapers, some sections were progressive in their content and their writing style. Recogni:iing the differences among women's page editors at various newspapers helps to strip away the invisibility of women injournalism history and stresses the important role played by them in pressingfor change. I f standard journalism history is any measure, few people agreed with Dorothy Roe, a former Penney-Missouri Awards judge, when she said, "The new women's page awards should be as important as the Pulitzer Prizes in the general news field.'" Rarely are the awards, which were sponsored by the J.C. Penney Company stardng in 1960 and given by the University of Missouri, included in journalism histories. The compeddon was inidated to "sdmulate development of better women's pages and encourage excellence in women's news repordng, fashion wridng and photography."^ The addidonal goal of the compeddon was to "to break down the tra- didonal editorial barriers which narrowed women's pages in the past to monotonously roudne recording of lilac-scented society and club news."' Nancy Beth Jackson, who was director of the awards program in the 1990s, said the Penney-Missouri Award "was one of the major forces in creadng lifestyle journalism. The awards were often described as the Pulitzer Prizes of feature wridng."'' KIMBERLY WILMOT VOSS is an as- sistant professor in the Department of Mass Communications at Southern Illi- nois University-Edwardsviile. This article comes from her doctoral dissertation, which was compieted under the direction of Maurine Beasley at the University of Maryland. A study of the award-winning entries is one of the most obvi- ous ways to examine the work of those considered the best of the women's page editors. The topics of the award-winning entries dis- pel the myth that the women's secdons were limited to fashion, family, food, and furnishings.^ While these tradidonal topics were important to women and this research does not intend to dismiss the tradidonal content, it will show that the secdons had a broader range of informadon than historical references typically represent. It also shows that some women's pages already had the t)'pe of content that Associated Press Managing Editors' studies in 1963 and 1969 recommended that newspapers strive to achieve.*" For much of the history of newspapers, the only places in them where at least some women's ideas and acdvides could be found were in the women's pages. By 1900, most newspapers had women's secdons, which were staffed by women journalists, and these secdons condnued to be the main venues for women journal- ists for much of the twendeth century, although occasionally they made it to the front pages. Newspapers were forced to hire women when men went into military service during World War I and World War II, but when the wars ended, the opportunides for female jour- nalists suddenly dried up. There were a few opportunides for them when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt held women-only White House press conferences to help women hold their place in journalism during Depression-era employee cutbacks, and these conferences produced a few front-page news ardcles.' Further excepdons were found on the staffs of smaller newspapers as well as the women who served as combat correspondents in World War II." journalism History 32:1 (Spring 2006) 43