Section 1: Q: I would like to know about the challenges
you face as a woman in journalism? What
obstacles did you face in the beginning and
how do you think things have changed?
A: Looking at this room, I’d say that’s a
sure indication of change because we’ve got
two young men and everybody else is female.
That isn’t the way it would’ve been a long
time ago when I was in journalism school.
When I graduated from Iowa, in those days,
the jobs that women frequently held were in
what you’d call the society department.
Today you might call them lifestyle and
actually, they’re a lot more varied today.
I went sight unseen for both me and them to
the Gazette in Billings, Montana. I was
hired over the phone. That paper then was
opened by the Anaconda Copper Company. It
was always a joke because you filled out an
employment form. Everyone in the company
filled out the same form and one of the
questions was “Would you mind being sent to
Chile?” They had a copper mine in Chile. The
newspaper people owned all the papers in
Montana at the time. So I went there to work
as a general assignment reporter. There was
one other reporter on the staff. Being a
woman was not particularly significant there
because the kinds of stories I was doing
would have been equally done by a man. It
didn’t make a lot of difference.
That paper was not a very good paper. I was
there a year and decided I was going to move
on. I had a job at the Champaign Urbana
paper an education reporter, but I was
offered a job at the Gazette at the same
time which was a combination reporting and
editing job, which I took instead. At the
Gazette, I was always the first woman in a
particular job. That’s the way it was. There
weren’t a lot of women on staff. If they
were they were in the social department. I
never particularly felt I was discriminated
against. I don’t’ think my pay at the
Gazette was any different than if a man had
come into that job.
Sometimes discrimination can be sort of an
odd thing. I remember a male reporter
telling me once—not at the Gazette, this was
somebody in Des Moines—I was wearing a skirt
so he didn’t know whether he should pass me
this piece of information. If it had been a
male reporter, he wouldn’t have, but because
I was a woman, he was going to be
gentlemanly and pass it along. It’s silly
little stuff like that. I think there was
discrimination frequently against women. I
don’t think I felt it. At the Gazette, I
don’t think I was discriminated against.
There were some rules in those early years.
If I had come onto the Gazette—instead of
coming onto a combination editing/reporting
job, where I was doing a variety of things
including some night work—if I had some on
as a general assignment reporter, the
Gazette had a rule that they would not send
a woman. There used to be a Saturday night
shift and they wouldn’t assign a woman to
it. The men ended up always doing these
weekend rotations because they wouldn’t put
women into it. In a way, the men came up on
the short end of the stick. Eventually, that
was changed and women eventually went into
the rotation.
Actually the attitude was pretty
paternalistic. Once the Gazette had sent me
to a meeting in New York and the guy who was
then the city editor told me that I was
never to ride the subway because it was
dangerous. You went ahead and rode the
subway and did what you were going to do. A
lot of the older men reacted as though you
were their daughter or their wife just in
the way they dealt with you. As far as
discrimination on the job and what I was
assigned, I don’t think I was ever affected
by that.
Q: What’s the reasoning behind that rule of
women not working the weekend shift?
A: It might be dangerous.
Q: Oh.
A: Nights, right. It was a stereotype. I’m
sure the Gazette was not unique in that. I’m
sure every paper did it pretty much the same
way. Except the time period they wouldn’t
have done it that way was during World War
II. Then they didn’t have a choice. Women
filled all of those roles on newspapers. But
once war ended and men came back, they went
back to doing it pretty much the way they
had. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make
sense. Even then, this was in the 50s, it
didn’t make sense then. It wasn’t that long
before it changed. The men were real happy
about when it was changed. --
Section 2: A: I was born in Stewart, Iowa, which is not
too far from Des Moines. I graduated from
high school in Garner. I came to Iowa and
graduated from here in 1956 and went to work
in Billings [Montana] for a year.
Q: Why?
A: Why Billlings? That’s where the job was.
Q: That’s where the job was?
A: That’s where a job was. It was sort of
exciting. I hadn’t been out of Iowa by that
time. We’re talking in the 50s when you
didn’t travel like you do now. It was
interesting to be able to go to Billings. I
hadn’t been in that area before.
Q: Were you scared?
A: No. It was a good place to start to work.
Billings, at that time, wasn’t far from the
frontier. That’s the way they still thought
of themselves. The one woman who was on
staff had been the police reporter during
World War II before she went back to being
the Society reporter. Billings was sort of a
frontier kind of town. It was on the edge.
The big three in Montana was the Union
Pacific, Anaconda, and the oil companies. It
was a different place to work and it was an
interesting place to start. It just wasn’t a
very good newspaper.
Q: Before you go on with that, you say,
“That’s where the job was.” How did you
learn about that job?
A: Through the school of journalism. They
had contacted the school of journalism and
they were looking for a general assignment
reporter.
Q: Were your parents concerned about you
moving so far away?
A: They perhaps were. I don’t remember any
particular discussion about it. I had a car
and I remember my mother rode out there with
me and came back on the train. We found an
apartment which was pretty utilitarian then.
Of course, the weather in Montana can be
fairly severe. I was within walking distance
of the Billings Gazette – that was another
Gazette. One night, a window in the
apartment fell out and landed on the cement
below. It was a good place to start.
Q: Were your parents supportive of you going
into journalism?
A: Yes. Puzzled, but supportive.
Q: Why puzzled? What did they want you to go
into?
A: To be a teacher. Nobody in the family had
ever done anything like this. My father was
a teacher and I had decided before I was
done with high school that’s what I was
going to do. They would have preferred that
I had gone to Iowa State – that’s where my
dad graduated from—and taken education. But
they were supportive. I came to Iowa and
graduated in journalism and went to work.
Q: So now we’re leading to Phyllis Fleming,
first job for the Billings Gazette. And your
beat was?
A: General assignment.
Q: Since you said it was such a different
environment, what kinds of different odd
things did you cover there? What things made
it a bad paper?
A: They wouldn’t have done anything
investigative. Since they were owned by
Anaconda, that set the tone. They were very
supportive of the state the way it was. The
big three companies pretty much ruled out
there. You didn’t do anything differently,
perhaps, than you might have done someplace
else, but there was certainly no idea that
this was a paper that was going to break new
ground. You were pretty much going to keep
doing things the same way they had always
done it. Many of the people had been there.
I was the first new employee they’d had for
a long time.
Q: All the way from Iowa.
A: Right.
Q: Was there anything you remember in
particular that caused you to shake your
head and say, “No, this isn’t the journalism
I want to do” ?
A: No, I can’t think of any one thing. It
obviously didn’t take me long to figure this
out since I was only there for a year before
I was starting to look around. But I can’t
think of any one thing.
Q: What was your salary?
A: Sixty-five dollars a week.
Q: Sixty-five dollars a week. O.K. So you
come back. How do you secure the job at the
Cedar Rapids Gazette?
A: When I was looking for a job, I sent out
resumes and I had a friend that was working
at the Champaign Urbana paper and she had
said there might be an opening coming up
there. So I sent one there and I sent one to
the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Again, I knew
people at the Gazette and I actually had had
the job in Champaign Urbana and then I
interviewed at the Gazette and decided that
the Gazette job, since it was a split job
between editing and reporting, offered more
variety. I ended up taking that instead. --
Section 3: Q: Do you remember a favorite story you did
at the Billings Gazette?
A: Not because it was such a wonderful
story, but mostly because it was something
about the Red Cross. When I got all done
with it, I decided I had really done a bang-
up job because I had succeeded in making
this an interesting story when, really, it
wasn’t all that interesting to begin with.
The things I was doing out there were pretty
routine.
Q: So you come back and you’re a reporter,
editor for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
Q: How much editing did you do in that
position?
A: Actually a lot. Keep in mind, I hadn’t
ever edited really before. When I’d been at
the Daily Iowa, I was editor of the
Editorial page, but that was editing in a
different way. You were picking wider
columns mostly and that kind of thing. At
the Gazette, the job I came back to was
called the Assistant State Editor. It meant
you were making up pages for the Sunday
paper and I started to work at the Gazette.
I was there a week before the man who was my
boss was suddenly gone on vacation because a
new child born in his family. I was making
up pages and I had never made up pages
before. You learn real fast when you’re
suddenly doing it.
In those days, it wasn’t pages on a
computer. You drew the outline on paper and
it went out to the back shop where somebody
with a line to type machine and, with little
slugs of type, put them in a page. It was a
wonderful experience. I learned how to make
up pages. I was on my own. Nobody was
helping me. I was the one doing the editing.
I was the one writing the headlines. I was
doing things like that that I had never done
before. I got off to a good start on it and
it’s probably a good way to do it. --
Section 4: Q: At the Daily Iowan, do you recall other
reporters who subsequently sought careers in
journalism whom you would work with?
A: There were several.
Q: Who?
A: A guy name Dan Hensen was at the Gazette
at the time. A guy named Ira Capestein went
onto the Milwaukee paper, the Milwaukee
Journal. There was a woman whose name at the
time was Ellie Bens. Flansburg was there as
well. He was a year ahead of me. There were
a couple others. Drake Mavery was there. He
was a year ahead. There were several others
there at the time.
Q: What made you stay at the Gazette for so
many years? How many years was that?
A: 45. I didn’t intend to. I thought I’d be
there for a couple of years and then move
on. I guess there was enough variety in what
I was doing that I ended up staying. For 12
years, I was the assistant State editor.
That’s the job that was a combination
reporting and editing. Then I moved to
Sunday Editor and eventually to City Editor.
Once I left that job, I never went back to
reporting. Once I moved onto Sunday editor,
I was always editing. The Gazette was trying
a lot of things.
There was one point where we were doing
projects. I was editing on the projects as
well. We sent two people to Brazil and
Argentina basically to do a farm story.
Brazil and Argentina are big competitors of
Iowa with corn and soybeans. We’re doing
projects and there were always enough
different things going on that I ended up
just staying. I’ve talked to other reporter
and editors that moved around and I got the
same kinds of experiences that they had,
only I got it all in one place.
Q: What kind of changes did you see in
technology and did those changes change the
dynamics of the newsroom and your job?
A: For the first 25 years there were
probably very few changes. You were still
using manual typewriters. You were using
pike-a-poles. They were still using
linotypes out back, but then once they
started to move towards computers, there was
sort of an interim period where they had IBM
Selectrics and punch tapes. It changed the
dynamics a lot because you had to spend a
lot more time with the technology and making
all these changes than you used to have to.
What’s interesting to me is when we were
still what they’d call “hot metal.” We used
to put down the paper. The Gazette had a
12:30 deadline and the paper came up at
1:00. This is when it was an afternoon
paper. This was in the process of changing
to a morning paper. In a half hour, the
paper came up. No newspaper today can do
that. You just can’t. You’re pledging
buttons and everything’s supposed to be that
much faster, but you can’t produce the paper
that fast.
It changed a lot of things. Some people
would say it made it easier. You’ve got
computer terminals with spell check and a
lot of the chores that you would have had to
do by yourself now you’ve got computers that
do it for you. There are other things that
didn’t change at all. Technology has not
changed at all the necessity for you as a
reporter or you as an editor, to have strong
word skills. Spell check may check the
spelling, but it still doesn’t tell you what
the words are. In the written word, you’re
forced to organize. Writing forces you to be
disciplines about what you’re doing in a way
that oral communication does not.
The basics really haven’t changed that much.
If you think you’re going to be a reporter
or editor, the basics of what you need to do
to accomplish that haven’t changed. The
technology, the tools have changed
drastically, but what you need to do hasn’t
changed. You’ve heard Steve talk often about
the need to have clips. That hasn’t changed
at all. --
Section 5: Q: Why do you prefer editing over reporting?
A: At one time I’m not sure I would have
said that I did, but I think in the long run
I did because it offers you to have a
broader role in a story or a project. The
reporter has a very definite role and when I
was a reporter I loved it. There was one
point when I remember thinking, “Boy, I’m
having a great time and they’re paying me
for this.” And then you get a byline in the
process. Editing is anonymous but still you
end up shaping the whole project. If you’re
the editor, you also have a role in what
happens with the project once it’s done and
moves onto the next phase.
Some people don’t like editing. Some people
choose deliberately to stay as a reporter
and I think they should be able to do that.
I don’t think they should force you into
making a change. Sometimes at some
companies, they would think if you’re good
reporter that he/she should be your good
editor.
Q: As an editor, are you ever tempted or
pressured to cut potentially controversial
or biased material from the stories that
could maybe put the paper in hot water
depending on what the reporter is covering?
A: If you’re saying it’s biased, you
probably should have it there anyway. The
reporter should have made some attempt to
make sure you’re getting both sides of the
issue. No, I’d have to say there isn’t any
pressure. You as the editor need to know the
community you’re serving. You need to know
what you newspaper is like and who your
readers are. There are some things that I,
personally, might not find offensive, but
because of my experience working at the
Gazette, I can lead to the sure conclusion
that many readers would find this offensive.
So you either don’t use that picture or do
something different with it.
Newspapers have policies. For instance, the
Gazette and many other newspapers would have
had a policy that said if you had a fatal
accident; the picture did not show bodies.
You know what that set of rules are before
you go into it. You also want to make sure
that the story is fair and that you’re
presenting as much as possible on both
sides. Sometimes that isn’t possible. I
think you use your own judgment.
Q: We read that you’re currently working on
a photo history book for the Gazette. We’re
wondering what that is?
A: When I worked at the Gazette before, they
had done two books in which the public was
encouraged to submit their own photos. Those
were handled through the newsroom as a
project and, actually, I did those. This one
is being handled through the Gazette’s
marketing department, but it’s the same kind
of project. There were prompts in the papers
asking the public to submit old pictures,
mostly old pictures, showing people
activities in early Cedar Rapids. Actually,
that book is done. It’ll be coming out now
in early November. The way they’re handling
it this time is very much as a commercial
project. It’s for sale. They all were, but
for this one, they will print 5,000 and
that’s all. And of course they hope this
leads to many more books. I probably won’t
be doing them. --
Section 6: Q: What’s your definition of news?
A: News, I think, is many things. It’s
things other people are interested in.
That’s the first thing an editor needs to
figure out. The public is interested in
things you might not be interested in.
Again, you have to know the kind of readers
you’re serving; what kinds of things you
think they’re interested in. One thing that
has changed a lot over the years is that the
readers today have much shorter attention
spans than they used to.
Q: And how does that manifest itself in the
newspaper?
A: It certainly manifests itself in a drive
to have shorter stories, shorter paragraphs,
no jumps. A lot of newspapers have gone
through this trend of having no jumps, which
doesn’t really work. In fact, that’s
something that reporters and editors always
need to remember is how far do you think
people are going to go with you? A lot of
people simply don’t read jumps and that’s a
fact of life, so you need to figure out how
you’re writing the story or how you’re
editing the story. That’s why you find a lot
of technical devices to try to tell readers
what else is down in the story without ever
really reading the story.
Things I may not think are news, other
people find to be newsy. You mentioned
crime. Almost universally, people would
consider crime to be news. One of the types
of news that affects most people in many
ways is City Council. She finds it boring. A
lot of people would agree with you, a lot of
readers would agree with you. And yet those
are the things that have potential to
influence reader’s lives more than the crime
news does.
Q: You said, “News is what people are
interested in.” Is news also what people
ought to be interested in and are not
interested in now?
A: That would have always been the
definition in earlier years. That was one of
the reasons that newspapers existed because
it was our role to make sure people knew
what they needed to vote. One of the most
disheartening things I ever remember is that
prior to an election, you have short files
on everybody running and many, many, many
things. On election morning, a woman called
up and said “Why haven’t you had anything in
the paper about the election?” Well, she was
ready to vote that day, so that was the
first time she cared to find out who might
be running. That’s real typical. It’s
typical of exactly the kind of news you’re
talking about. I think newspapers still have
that ambition a little bit, but because of
the way things have changed it’s not quite
as strong as it used to be.
Q: That’s an important difference.
A: It’s a huge difference.
Q: What Phyllis is suggesting is news is
coverage of what people are interested in or
should be interested in. What she’s
suggesting is that news is coverage of what
people are interested in. The role of the
editor is no longer to tell you out there
what you ought to know.
A: No.
Q: You don’t have that space and that
freedom any longer.
A: No. When you tell your reporters you
don’t want anything longer than 10-15 inches
for the bulk of stories they’re writing,
until you get to something you judge has
more magnitude than that. You can get a lot
in 10-15 inches. Actually, that’s a real
challenge for the reporter. Instead of
viewing it one way – most of them tend to
think they will have to cut all the good
stuff out. For a writer, that’s a bigger
challenge. With a 10-15 inch story, you can
really do great things, but you have to work
harder at it. Sometimes the 10-15 inch
stories are better written than the ones
that are 25. Frequently they are because you
don’t have to spend as much time working on
them. When you’re writing a 25-inch story,
you keep throwing information in there until
you think you’re done. Then you pass it
along to the editor and let them take care
of it. That’s one thing that reporters do
all the time that they shouldn’t. They lose
control of their own story. Instead of
really working at it to come up with a
legitimate 10-15 inches, they allow somebody
else – the editor in this case – to make the
decisions that they should’ve made in the
first place. Reporters can lose control of
their own stories and they’ll blame it on
the editor when it comes back in the paper.
But, really, the first responsibility is
theirs.
Q: How do you distinguish the difference
between what people want to know and what
people ought to know.
A: A lot of it depends on how much time you
spend with your sources. How much time have
you spent with the people you’re getting the
information from? How much background have
you provided yourself with how important it
is? If you’re dealing with a crime story,
that’s one thing. If you’re dealing with a
sports story, that’s something else. Sports
stories – sports reporters would dispute
this – but sports stories always been one of
the easiest to write because they always
have a conclusion: somebody won or lost.
Other stories don’t have that obvious lead
that you start out with. You really have to
background yourself enough so that you have
an idea of what’s important and what’s not
important about what you’re trying to offer.
Again, a lot of times reporters don’t do
that. They expect to get all of their
information from the person they’re talking
to instead of having done any background on
it themselves. That also means they can’t
ask very good questions if they haven’t done
enough background.
None of this is new. These are the same kind
of problems we could’ve talked about 30
years ago. You need to background yourself.
You need to be able to ask the right
questions. Reporters are always pretty much
in control at a certain point. They’re the
ones deciding how to ask the questions and
what kind of questions to ask.
Just the other day I was talking with
somebody about objectivity. Really, fairness
might be better word when you’re working on
a story because a reporter, when they’re
deciding what questions to ask, to a certain
extent, unless the source brings other
information in, you’re controlling what kind
of information you get. If you’re lucky,
you’ve asked all the right questions and
have what you need. If not, you end up with
a story that leaves a lot of holes and
somebody finds the questions. You need to
know enough about your topics so that you’re
asking the person the right questions. --
Section 7: Q: What are two or three stories, when you
look back on your career, you really think
these stories mean something to you-- that
either effected some change or for some
reason they’re favorites for you?
A: I’ve worked on a lot of special projects.
The Gazette did a special project after
9/11. As far as editing the stories and
helping bringing it together, some of those
sections were some of the more significant.
First of all, there was a special section
that was done after 9/11. The public, at
that point, was really wanting information,
so you knew that this special section was
going to be paid attention to. You knew what
you chose to do, for some people, was going
to be summing up what had happened.
Something like that would be one of the more
significant things.
As far as writing stories—this goes back a
long way—the Amish in Iowa. It was a very
uproarious time when we were trying to force
them to have certified teachers. Those were
interesting stories to do because it became
a national issue. The 60s when the campus
down here was in constant turmoil—for a
reporter, those were exciting times because
there was a lot going on. My first
experience with tear gas was covering a
story in the old memorial union. Charles
Grassley was on the panel. He was a state
legislator at the time. He’s much more
moderate now then he was then. Not everybody
would probably agree with that, but he is.
It was something called the Free Speech
Movement and we were all sitting and the
place was packed. All of a sudden the doors
on one side opened and something was thrown
into the room. We didn’t know what it was
right away, but it turned out to be tear
gas. It drifted across the room and it
didn’t take long before you could feel it
and everybody had to evacuate.
Q: What year was this?
A: Oh I don’t remember. I’ve always had a
lousy memory for years. Sandy Boyd was
president. It was an uproarious time on
campus. From a reporter’s standpoint, it was
great because there a lot going on all of
the time. TV was just starting to come into
its element then, too. You could always tell
if there was a TV camera around because
you’d always see this little knot of people
around on the corner, waiting to have their
picture taken and the camera would leave and
they’d all disappear and they’d all go to
another corner.
Q: Were there any people who inspired you to
go into journalism or any influence you had
early on in your career?
A: I got interested because a friend of mine
and her dad had a weekly paper. I know
that’s the reason I got interested. When you
think about it, it doesn’t make a lot of
sense because somehow I just got interested
and once I made the decision, I stayed with
it. After I’d started to work, there were
many people that I learned from. In those
days, frequently you’d have to take
dictation on the phone. Some people can
dictate off the top of their heads and
they’re extremely good at it. There was a
man that worked at the Gazette – Frank Nigh.
He could dictate 20-inch stories without any
notes. You can learn from people that are
able to do that. He was also a very ethical
kind of man. There are things that you learn
sometimes. You have to develop your own code
of ethics. I’m sure that some part of mine
came form him.
Q: How about women mentors? Or were there no
women mentors?
A: I didn’t have one. I think now, if you
would ask young women that, they would say
that they did. I probably am for some of the
younger women. When I started, there were a
couple other women on the Gazette. There was
one in Features and there were several women
in the Society department. Since I decided I
wasn’t going to go that direction, I didn’t
consider them mentors.
Q: Did you not want to go that direction
because you didn’t think that was as
significant as being a hard news reporter?
A: I wasn’t interested in that kind of news.
I think, actually, for many people, that was
news. Society news was big news. If you go
back into all the early papers, you can tell
by looking at how much space was devoted to
it. Now, we don’t call it society anymore.
We call it lifestyle. Now, if I was coming
up and looking for a job, I might consider
it as an area to work in because it’s a lot
more interesting. They’re doing more issue
stories and it’s not defined as society.
