Marjorie Paxson

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 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 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. but while she supervised a staff of seven, she was not given hiring and firing authority. 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. At Xilonen, she edited the work of influential writers such as Germain Greer. After she retired she wrote a weekly column for the Phoenix called "Nobody Asked Me But..." which focused on local issues, daily life, and her travels. == Theta Sigma Phi ==

Paxson was elected president of Theta Sigma Phi in 1963 while working at the Miami Herald and held that office until 1967. During her tenure she transformed the organization from a social group into a professional association. The group had been founded in 1908 as a sorority for journalism students and was the de facto professional association for women journalists, who were not accepted into the Society of Professional Journalists. Paxson campaigned for a more professional approach, a stance which was not popular with all members, many of whom disagreed with her emphasis on education and training. She led the group to establish a headquarters in Austin, Texas; previously the organization's files had been stored in the national secretary's garage. She also lobbied to change the name from the Greek symbols to Women in Communications, which she considered a more businesslike title; the name change ultimately occurred after her time in office ended. ==Views and advocacy==

Paxson advocated for working women; in 1966, she advised other women's page editors to "stop downgrading women executives." As the feminist movement developed mainstream support, women's pages began to be viewed as anachronistic. At a time when many women's pages were steadily increasing their coverage of hard news, many newspapers decided to eliminate the sections in favor of features sections, and often hired men to manage those sections. The women's page editors were often demoted or fired. Paxson was twice demoted when her paper replaced its women's section, first at the St. Petersburg Times and later at the Philadelphia Bulletin; both times, a man was made editor of the new section. Paxson once described her own firing and demotion to a group of other professional women, one of whom commented, "Marj, you have to accept the fact that you're a casualty of the women's movement", an opinion with which Paxson said she agreed. She wrote in 1983 that when newspapers changed "women's sections to general interest feature sections, women's editors paid the price. We were not considered capable of directing this new kind of features section. That was man's work." == Awards ==

Paxson won a 1969 Penney-Missouri Award, often described as the "Pulitzer Prize of feature writing", for General Excellence at the St. Petersburg Times; In 2020 she was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. == Death and legacy ==

Paxson donated her papers and $50,000 to the University of Missouri to create the National Women and Media Collection, which documents media coverage by, about and for women in the United States, in 1986, the year of her retirement. one of four women's page journalists to be included in a group of over 60 interviewees. The others were Anderson, Jurney, and Vivian Castleberry. She never married and had no children. ==References==