Dr. Kimberly Wilmot Voss, an assistant professor of Journalism in the Nicholson School of Communication, received two awards at the American Journalism Historians Association Convention in Tucson, Ariz.<\/p>\n
\u201cFood Journalism or Culinary Anthropology? Re-evaluating Soft News and the Influence of Jeanne Voltz\u2019s Food Section in the Los Angeles Times\u201d received the David Sloan Award for the Outstanding Faculty Paper and the Maurine Beasley Award for the Outstanding Paper on Women\u2019s History.<\/p>\n
She answered some questions regarding her prestigious awards and recent work.<\/p>\n
How did you come up with the idea to write about Jeanne Voltz?<\/strong><\/p>\n I specialize in telling the stories of women\u2019s page journalists from the 1950s and 1960s who are often left out of the historical record. Other than a few specific exceptions, women were restricted to the women\u2019s pages at newspapers as journalists until the early 1970s.<\/p>\n Often, newspaper history is about hard news topics, things like politics, crime, etc. What is typically ignored is soft news, things like features, food and fashion \u2013 the topics that women were most likely to write about in the 1950s and 1960s. Telling the stories of these women is important to under the role of women in journalism.<\/p>\n A few years ago, two of the leading journalism industry publications wrote about the trend of food journalism \u2013 as if this was a new concept. There was no mention of the role women had played for decades in creating a foundation for food journalism. The women and their work were marginalized. I wanted to correct that.<\/p>\n Why is her work important?<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the best examples of a food journalist from the 1950s and 1960s was Jeanne Voltz \u2013 of the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times.\u00a0 She also wrote several cookbooks, including one of first to consider barbeque as American cuisine. I examined Voltz\u2019s work at the Times and found that she wrote about topics that are significant today \u2013 food safety, nutrition and consumer issues. In my paper for the American Journalism Historians Association convention, I also included a biographical sketch because so little is known about women food journalists. In doing so, I interviewed her daughter and former colleagues.<\/p>\n