The first true society page in the United States was the invention of newspaper owner
James Gordon Bennett Sr., who created it for the
New York Herald in 1840. His reportage centred upon the lives and social gatherings of the rich and famous, with names partially deleted by dashes and reports mildly satirical. Mott
et al. record that "Society was at first aghast, then amused, then complacent, and finally hungry for the penny-press stories of its own doings." In Britain, society news was at the same time emerging in the British press as part of "women's journalism", again aimed at attracting a female readership. It was also, in both the U.S. and Britain, largely the province of women journalists, and considered subordinate. For example, Society news, in the late 19th century, was not sent to the newspapers by reporters via the
telegraph, as other news was because that was considered too expensive for mere society reporting. Society journalists instead sent their reports by ordinary mail. Under her stewardship, the
Toronto Globe expanded its society coverage from weekly notes to a daily column in three years. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, society reporting was seen as largely the province of female journalists. The "women's pages" were written by women. Indeed, in the 19th century in many newspapers, particularly smaller ones, the only women on the paper's staff at all were those who covered society news. Male reporters were unwilling to cover such things. As Morton Sontheimer stated in 1941, "The women's department jobs almost invariably go to women, not because men can't do them but because they won't." (
Newspaperman, pp. 228). One such reporter who refused to do the job even though it had been handed to him was
Gordon Sinclair, of the
Toronto Star. Sinclair got the job of woman's page editor after Clifford Wallace, its previous editor, had begged to be relieved of the job. Wallace, the first male woman's page editor of the
Star and nicknamed "Nellie" because of that, had been given the job as the result of the proprietor's wife, Mrs Atkinson, regarding the women who had previously run the women's desk as "a menace". In 1922, the managing editor reassigned the position from Wallace to Sinclair. Sinclair treated the position with utter contempt. He later wrote: In 1936, journalist Ishbel Ross declared that "No society writer is more widely known on both sides of the Atlantic than May Birkhead."
Birkhead wrote society columns for the Paris editions of the New York Herald and the Chicago Tribune (which merged into the
International Herald Tribune) throughout the 1920s and 1930s. == See also ==