After I graduated with my journalism degree from Valparaiso University in May 1992, my first two newsrooms I worked in were the Vidette-Messenger in Valparaiso, where I had interned the previous year, and the South Bend Tribune, the latter which was the daily newspaper I was raised on at the farm. Both of these newspapers were afternoon delivered to doorsteps and driveways.
I still recall how impressed I was with the downtown towering office building which still houses the South Bend Tribune, family-owned by the Schurz family, founded in 1872 and family-operated until 2019 when it was sold to GateHouse Communications and later Gannett.
I always preferred to write about travel and entertainment, which meant I was assigned to work in the features department. When shown to that part of the newsroom, the editors and writers were housed in a long space with a wonderful window view. Painted on the glass window of the office in cursive writing were the words "Women's News Department," which intrigued me.
For centuries, women readers of newspapers were categorized as minds and hearts only interested in subject matter such as cooking, recipes, gardening, social engagement, fashion, decorating, celebrities and raising children. These were the subjects relegated to "women's news."
In 1992, the painted department sign "Women's News Department" still existed on the features department at the South Bend Tribune! At the Valparaiso offices of the Vidette-Messenger, there wasn't a sign referring to "Women's News," but the sentiment was still the same.
It was during my newspaper college internship in the summer of 1991 when I met my first newsroom features editor, the late, great Sharon Rocchio, who served as the features department's food, entertainment, religion, garden and lifestyles editor. Sharon, who died too soon at age 69 in July 2019, still ranks as one of my favorite assigning editors. Her always-smiling husband Pasquale "Pat" Rocchio, who followed her in death just days after she died, happened to be the managing editor of the newspaper.
Sharon despised being cast as an editor of "non-important" topics as hinted by the male editors from the news, business and sports departments. Raised on her family's farm, Sharon received her bachelor's degree in journalism from Indiana University in 1971 and worked for 32 years at the Kokomo Tribune before coming to the Vidette-Messenger in 1987, which in 1995 was purchased by the Times of Northwest Indiana.
While working for the Post-Tribune and Chicago Tribune Media Co., I recently discovered that our Post-Tribune flagship newspaper has a features claim-to-fame.
Dorothy Misener Jurney, who died at age 93 in June 2002, hailed from Michigan City and was the "women's news editor" at the Post-Tribune before serving in the same role at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Daily News, Detroit Free Press and Miami Herald.
Hailed as "the Godmother of Newspapers' Women's Pages" by the National Press Club, she is credited with shifting the focus of newspaper feature pages from the "Four F's of family, food, fashion and furnishings" to more serious coverage of women's issues "as hard news."
Because of Dorothy's influence, other newspapers followed. Her father Herbert Roy Misener was the owner and publisher of the Michigan City News. He encouraged her journalism career, and she graduated in 1930 from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She became the women's news department editor at the Post-Tribune in 1939 and left a year later after she married engineer Frank J. Jurney in 1940.
"A lot of people think Gary is the end of the world, not the beginning as I did," Dorothy said during one interview long ago.
"I found it exciting because I learned about people and countries and religious ways of life I didn't know existed. There were Ruthenians, Moldavians, Bosnians, Serbians, Croats, Greek Catholics and bankers and steel executives."
She said she found newsrooms' imbalance of men to women journalists to be the same in cities around the country.
"Back in the 1950s, male editors didn't give a care about what we 'girls' put in the sections," Dorothy is quoted as explaining her early career struggles.
"It was all filler to them. But some of us women editors thought differently and started covering issues they thought women should know about."
While she was women's page editor at the Detroit Free Press, the newspaper's then-publisher Lee Hills once introduced her with what he considered a compliment, "as our women's editor, but if she were a man, she'd be the executive editor."
According to the collection of papers and documents of Dorothy's life and career, now housed in the archive and manuscript collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Dorothy explained in one interview that she quickly discovered early in her career that often the women journalists delegated to serve as newspaper food editors rarely cooked, nor were they culinary experts to perform needed recipe editing.
"One of these young women was Helen Crumpacker," Dorothy cited about her former features department colleague in the chronicled interview on file in the Missouri archive.
"It's the late 1930s and Helen was the daughter of a prominent judge in the community. And I remember Helen telling about her experiences of preparing, I guess, a cake, and she had to ask her mother how you did this. And her mother said, 'Well, you just put a little of this in and put a little of that in." And so she opted to put applesauce in it. And, well I guess it was edible, but different. We decided that newspaper women didn't know much about cooking. And I think that stuck with me the rest of my life."
Dorothy's description with the example above makes me smile. As readers of this column know, and as with any published recipes, measurements need to be more precise than just saying "a little of this" and "a little of that."
Today's vintage file applesauce cake is from the 1930s, and the measurements are precise and perfect for a moist and delicious easy snack cake in homage to all of our features department journalists from yesteryear.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is a radio host on WJOB 1230 AM. He can be reached at [email protected] or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Cream together butter and sugar in a large bowl, stir in corn syrup and set aside; sift together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
Dissolve the baking soda in applesauce and add flour mixture and applesauce mixture alternately to creamed mixture.
Pour into greased 13-inch by-9-inch pan; bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes or until cake tests done.