A Place in the News: From the Women's Pages to the Front Page

A feature writer on the Los Angeles Times, Mills here presents a stimulating history of women's gradual advances in the print medium. Studious research combined with interviews of male and female reporters, editors and publishers, strengthen this account of female journalists from colonial times onward. Except for daring Elizabeth Cochrane (""Nelly Bly'') and a few others known as ``stunt girls,'' who pursued important news in the late 1800s and early 1900s, women of the press made no headway against prejudicial male attitudes. As Mills shows, it took a militant and influential first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, to promote the cause of women reporters, but their status declined again after the 1930s. Despite anti-discrimination suits, settled in favor of the complainants, progress is still slow, according to the author. But, she adds, some journalists refuse offers to move up, for fear of losing touch with their domestic lives. (May)