Mary Bryson interview about journalism career, Iowa City, Iowa, April 24, 1998

Section 1: Q: Mary Bryson is a long-time reporter for the Des Moines Register and has a wealth of information about Iowa and about journalism, two issues she is very interested in. Mary, why don't you start by telling us how you began in journalism. Tell us where you were born and how you arrived one day at the Register. A: I was born and grew up in Omaha [Nebraska]. I got interested in journalism in high school and then came to Drake [University] and went to the journalism school. It wasn't a school then; it was a department. And then to the Register. And I worked there the rest of my life. Q: That was your first job out of school. A: My first job, and my only one except for some free-lancing. Q: What year was that and when did you leave the Register? A: I started in 1936 and I retired eighteen years ago. Q: 1980? A: I think so. Thereabouts. Although, I didn't really retire. I kept on writing "Home Furnishings," which was my speciality most of the time I was there. Q: Tell us about your early days at the Register in the late '30s. How many women there were at the Register. What your job assignments were. Some of your stories. A: In the early days, I worked for what they called the Society department. Later it became the Women's Department, then the Home and Family. Now it is Today. That is the title [of the section] in the paper. There were six of us in that department. The only women in the newsroom. In fact, we weren't really in the newsroom. We had offices back behind the newsroom. No women at all. Even the stenographers and the managing editor's secretary were young men. We were treated very respectfully and very kindly. In fact, I think they were very protective of us. But, they paid us half as much as any man in the newsroom. Q: How much was that? A: I started out at eighteen dollars in '36. Which was great, because most of my friends were making about thirteen. But the Register [and the Tribune], as the biggest paper in the state, paid better. Q: When did you realize you were getting paid half of what the men were getting paid? A: I married a young sports writer. Before that, no one discussed salaries. We just didn't do that. And discovered he was making [forty dollars a week]. By then, I was making twenty dollars and he was making forty. And he got a raise because he got married, but I didn't. The idea in those days was that they didn't want married women taking jobs away from men. So, most places, if you got married, you left your job. And we got a lot of good women from Meredith's [publisher of Better Homes and Gardens] because they had to leave. They wouldn't keep them after they were married. Q: They were summarily dismissed. A: Yes. And a lot of companies did that. The Register [and Tribune] didn't, however. They really kind of liked to have couples there. And there were a lot of couples working in the newsroom. Always have been. Q: Did you do anything after you married your husband and you found out you were making half of what the men were making? A: It never occurred to me that that wasn't all right. Men had families to support. That was the theory then. Women went along with it for a good many years. I think it was in about the '70's that women in the newsroom began to protest. And, very soon, salaries went up. Q: You have got a newsroom of men. The only women in the newsroom are off on the side and they are doing Home Furnishings or the Society section. A: Actually, in the early days of Society, that was all. Weddings, parties, personals. Hardly anything else in the whole section. And it was a big section. Sometimes as many as thirty pages. and it was very well read. Women, in those days, were interested in parties and where people were going for the weekend. And then, slowly, we got into Features. I did one of the first Features. I think it was Frank Eyerly who asked me to..no, the editor who was in charge of us [our department], asked me to do some Home Furnishings which I didn't know anything about. He said, "Just do a reporting job. Just go out and see the stores." From that, I eventually became the Home Furnishings writer. That was all I did for the last twenty years. But, in the beginning, you did everything except sweep the floor. You read copy, wrote weddings, took telephone calls. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: What was the most memorable Society story you did when you were in the Society section? A: I think it probably was the first one when I went out with a photographer to a big wedding reception. I got into the paper. We didn't have by-lines in those days, but you knew that was your story. Actually, we didn't cover a lot of things. Mostly, it was brought in by the brides and families. And parties and things. But, we would send a photographer out and do the whole front page on one big party or a big wedding. Q: Did you ever feel that you wanted to cover the news? A: No. I had no ambitions that way. I liked what I was doing. Many of the women who worked there then went on. Lillian McLaughlin started out in the Society section and then became one of our major reporters for years. Q: Did you feel the "blood and guts' were something the men covered and the women covered the lighter side of life? A: Yes. That was the way it was for the most part. There weren't very many women reporters in the country. A few, but not everywhere. Class member: When you covered Society, did you cover a particular section of Des Moines society? You didn't cover blacks? A: No, no, we did not. We were very discriminatory. We didn't even take wedding stories from poor people. If they came in looking a little ragged, they didn't get their picture in the paper. We thought it was all right. We didn't question things then. But, played up the big names in Des Moines. Q: What was the idea behind that? That you didn't take stories from people who were poor? A: It was Society and you were either in society or you were not. Q: What did you think of that Society? What defined it? A: At the time, I wasn't wise enough to know how horrible it was. But, of course, later we did realize that this wasn't fair. We went along with the way it had always been done. Class member: Do you remember when it changed? A: I would say maybe in the '50s. Women's rights came in. I don't think salaries changed until maybe the '60s. Q: You expanded your coverage into other sectors? A: We got into Features later. My Home Furnishings was about the first. We had a medical column which was one of the most popular features in the paper. Written by a doctor giving medical advice. When he died and we didn't have it anymore, we had hundreds of letters protesting and saying, "What happened to him?" Everything else was just social news in our section. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: Were there other sacred cows? Were there issues you just couldn't touch, either because of the newspaper or because of Des Moines at that time. A: The paper didn't get into many scandals unless it was pretty blatant. And, Mike Cowles made a rule that all his divorces and weddings were to go on page one, so that if anyone else was divorced, we would put big names, well known people, if they were divorced or secretly married or did anything like that, would go on page one of the news section. Mike insisted we do that for him, too, so they couldn't say we weren't fair. Q: Talk about the Cowles family and how the Cowles family ran the paper. Also about how the paper has made a transition, in your observation, under its current ownership. A: Old Mr. Cowles ran the paper and Mike was our contact. He had been in the newsroom, I think, before I came, but by then he was in the ivory tower. But he kept an eye on everything. If there was a mistake in the paper, you might get a call from Mike Cowles. And later, from Dave Kruidenier. "There is something wrong. Fix it." It was a family paper and they treated everyone like family except they didn't have the money to pay high salaries. But they did, if you were sick, you were taken care of. I think they sent Sec Taylor to Florida for a year to recuperate from a heart attack. And my husband got sick and he was given a long leave, two or three years leave of absence, paid. Which they don't do now. And under, Dave Kruidenier, it was the same way. We were very happy with everything. But, under Gannett, I don't think it is. Q: Talk about the difference of news that you see in the paper versus how it used to be. You still read the Register every day? A: Oh, yes. Well, we didn't go in much for scandals. We didn't know about them, of course, a lot of them. In the main news section. And, of course, the Society section was designed to make everybody happy, we tried to get everybody in society. We didn't seem to care about the poor people. And, news was not as personalized. Reporters just told the facts. They didn't try to get their own opinions into it [stories] as some of them do today. Q: Is that better or worse? A: It is more readable the way it is now, but, maybe, not as fair. Q: How is it unfair? A: Private lives are invaded a lot more. We wouldn't do things like that in the old days. We wouldn't have been allowed to. But, I don't really think we need to know everything. Class member: Were there times when you wanted to put more in? A: No, we couldn't. And, of course, we didn't know everything then. We didn't know a great many things that were happening in politics. We didn't know our governor was having an affair. But we wouldn't have...nobody ever thought of putting it in the paper. If we did know scandals, they were not published. Not news. Q: Do you remember any specific incidence when you were on the Society pages of people coming to you and saying, "Mary, please don't write that." Like drunk driving arrests? Any specific memories you have? A: I wouldn't have been involved in that type of story. But we did have people come in and say, "I don't want that wedding in the paper because I don't want my son marrying that women." And, we would run it if the young couple wanted it. We would still run it. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: Did you ever run pictures of interracial couples who got married? A: No, we just ran pictures of the bride. Q: All the brides were white, anyway? A: All the ones we used. I don't think we ever ran a black. I don't think we had any other requests besides a few blacks and we didn't run them. Q: Why not? A: We were prejudiced in those days. We didn't know any better. It was Society and Mrs. Hubbell wouldn't want her daughter's picture next to a maid's picture - was the theory. Class member: Tell us about Mrs. [Grover] Hubbell, [an early social leader]. What was it like covering her? A: She was a lovely, lovely lady. I didn't cover her much. We had a couple of women who did nothing but Society. But, Society was a big thing in Des Moines in those days. There were maybe a couple of hundred names that we used over and over. I think, they have drifted away from Society. There was a managing editor's convention someplace and Ken MacDonald went to it and they said, "Women are beyond this now. They are interested in more things than social affairs. Or food and furniture, even." So, we suddenly became a Feature section. We still ran food, but not as much fashion. Not as much trivial stuff. Q: In covering Society, you actually, during your job, operated with society. You were invited to these parties. Did you ever, at all, sense that you were, even for a second or two, part of that society? A: I didn't cover that so much, but some of the girls [women] in the department were part of the society. I mean, Peggy Hippee's family was a leading family here. Usually, we sent her out to the major things. And, most of the women working there, if they were from Des Moines, they were in the Society section [from old established families]. Not all of them. There were a few. Q: So they were society girls writing about Society. A: And I think, before my time, everybody was society. That was how they got their job. They knew the society people. Q: Did you feel you were an outsider because you weren't a Des Moines girl? A: No, they were very nice to the reporters. They liked the news. And, mostly I did editing in those days and I didn't go out on too many assignments. Until I got into writing Home Furnishings. Class member: How did you know the people who were the members of society? Did you have a list of names in the office? A: We had an old-time editor [Suzette Abbott] who had been there for years and we said, "Suzette, how big should this picture be?" "She is worth two columns. She is worth one column." Or, "forget it." Class member: Describe a typical day when you first went into the newsroom? What would you do and why? A: In our department, we did everything. On the weekends, we all pitched in and read proofs and read copy. Took telephone calls. Did whatever came up. And then, most of us had specialized jobs, too. For quite a while, I was women's editor and just directed it, more or less. Two women did nothing but society [news] and a couple of them proof-read and laid out the pages. We had big sections every day, both in the Register and the Tribune. And Sunday. So, it was a lot of work for six people to do. Class member: How many hours a day did you work? A: When I started, forty-eight hours [per week] was standard. Then, the forty hour week came in. The paper said, "We can't run a paper on forty hours a week." Class member: Did they pay you overtime? A: No. Oh, no. If you didn't get your work done...we didn't work a lot of overtime, but if you had to, you stayed and finished it. And then, when forty hour work weeks came in, we got two half days off a week plus Sunday. Because they just needed somebody there every day. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: Today there is a word we hear a lot. It is sexual harassment. Think back. Were there ever incidents of men who, in today's lingo, would qualify as harassers on your staff? A: No, never. Never saw anything like that. There weren't too many young women there. About half of our force were older women. And I think maybe they were protective of us. Ken McDonald was the boss. He wouldn't put up with anything like that, I am sure. But it never happened. Q: Was there alcohol ever in the newsroom? Did newspaper men and/or women ever get drunk? A: Not on the job, except we had one editor, who was a marvelous editor, he didn't show up two or three days a week. They kept him on for years. And then, one day, they fired him. Everyone was so surprised and shocked because you didn't fire people in those days. He was the only one I knew of. I think there was drinking, of course, and a lot of partying went on because there were a lot of young people. All the people you have interviewed were young then. Class member: Did you get along with your co-workers? A: Yes, we were...most of them are still my best friends. The ones that are still living. Yes, it was a much more a family affair in the newsroom in those days. Even with the men out in the newsroom. If they weren't too old for us, like thirty, we eyed them as prospective dates. Q: Of course, you eyed your future husband who was working there. A: I spotted him right away. Q: Could you talk to us about how that happened? A: He was in the sports department, which was right next to our department. When I saw him in there, I thought, "He looks pretty good." We just kind of met at office parties, I think, and drifted into it. And, in those days, they were happy to have you marry somebody in the newsroom, or somebody in the building. They kind of liked the idea of having couples, I think. They felt it would be less likely that two people would leave than one. Q: Talk about what it was like to be a newspaper woman. To be a part of that fraternity - or sorority. A: It was a very friendly group. In fact, most of your parties and most of your social life was with other newspaper people. And it was fun. We really liked working. The first thing we would do every morning was go out for coffee and find out what happened overnight. Now, nobody has time for that. It was a much more relaxed...even though, we did just as much work. In fact, I think, more. -- <br><br> Section 6: Class member: What was the reputation of the Register or the Tribune among journalists at the time? In the state? But also, outside the state? A: I think, in those days, it was a very well known paper. It had more Pulitzer prizes than the New York Times. And was the state paper and was a prestigious paper. I don't know what has happened to it in recent years, but it was the best in the state. And now, I don't think they can claim that everywhere. Q: Did you feel you had a mission as a journalist, besides having a good time? A: No, not particularly. It was just a good job. A pleasant job. I was not a crusader. In fact, I never thought women's rights, that we had any. I just went along with what was going on, as most of us did in those days. Q: Can you talk about the politics of the newsroom? The pecking order of the newsroom? There were some stars who were reporters. A: Yes, I think there was a lot of competition between the Register and the Tribune, which was the afternoon paper, for years. But, just a few star reporters. Q: Who? A: Herb Owens. I don't know if you know that name. He is long gone. But, I don't think there was much tension or any problems. And, not any in our department. They were all pretty well satisfied with their niches. Q: You said the Register had a lot of high credibility back when you were working for it. And you think it is changed. Can you talk more about that? A: Well, I have a grandson who works for the Waterloo Courier and he thinks they are far superior to us in news coverage and, even, technology. The Cedar Rapids Gazette pushes us for circulation. We are not the state paper we used to be. We used to have a state edition in Society, one for the Davenport area, and the other for Council Bluffs. And then, the city edition for Des Moines. And now, we don't have much circulation in any of those areas. Q: What has changed? Circulation has gone down? A: Circulation has gone down. I suppose there is a lot more competition with TV and radio. We didn't really have any competition in those days. And then, they have drawn in themselves. It is too costly to deliver papers clear to the edge of the state. So, they have cut out both the Council Bluffs area and the Davenport/Dubuque area. Q: The paper used to be family owned. Now, it is owned by a company in Arlington, Virginia. Does that make a difference going from a home run paper by a family from Des Moines? A: Yes. A considerable difference in a personal way, I think. I was retired by then, so I didn't really run into much of that. But, I think there is a lot of difference between them in personal owner and the Cowles family. They took care of people. Now, if you get sick, you are on disability or...it's not the paper's problem. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: Of all the stories that you wrote, does one story stick out that, for a whole bunch of reasons, that is your favorite? A: Well, I suppose the first time I got to cover a furniture market, a national furniture market. Then, after that, I went every year and it wasn't such a big deal. Q: Tell us about how big a deal it was. A: I went to the Chicago Merchandise Mart, which was an enormous building, I thought in those days. Now, compared to High Point [North Carolina, the leading home furnishings market], it is just a little place. And, stayed a couple of nights in a hotel on the company. Three dollars a night. And, that was thrilling to me. That wasn't a big story to anybody else. Q: Why was it so thrilling? A: I liked writing about home decorating and furnishing. That was what I wanted to do. It was my first big assignment. I really enjoyed it a lot. Q: Was it the fact also that the company trusted you enough to pay your way to Chicago and put you up in a hotel? That you were a specialist? A: Yes, I think so. I think I felt that this was the beginning of more interesting writing than society notes. And it was. The last twenty years, that was all I did, was home furnishings and decorating. We would go out and take pictures of houses and do stories about it. It was something I enjoyed doing. But I think they had trouble filling the job. Not everybody wanted to do that. Q: In viewing home furnishings, I assume you would not go into homes of people who were not wealthy. Did you ever go into apartments? A: Did apartments occasionally. I did one on four bachelors, what they did with their apartment. But, mostly, they were unusual homes or there was something different about them that we would feature. Not always mansions, but there wouldn't be much to tell about an average home that would be newsworthy. Q: Did you ever go into a black person's home? A: No. I don't think so. Even in later years, I don't think I did. Yes, I did. Mrs. [Elaine] Estes. I think she is the only one. Class member: Was she a wealthy woman? A: She collected antiques. She was our librarian for a long time and is well known in Des Moines. I think that was the story - on her antiques. Class member: What kind of feedback would you get on your stories? Would people write in to you? Give you a call? What was the reaction of the public to your work? A: It was well received when they would do surveys. Home Furnishings and Food, and even Fashions, were among the better read things. But, gradually, in recent years, especially since Gannett has come in, I noticed they don't run much on the home. Homemaking of any kind. One day a week. Class member: When you wrote some of the society notes, did you ever get calls from people who criticized what you wrote? Maybe saying you had the facts wrong or didn't like the way you... A: Yes. If we had a name wrong, we heard about it. Class member: What is your perspective about what happened at a society party? A: Well, mostly it would be if names were wrong. But I can remember, the mother of the bride came in and I said, "Is this the way you spell the bridegroom's name?" "Oh, it doesn't matter." And it was wrong. We didn't have enough sense to look that one up. They gave us wrong information quite often. We had a woman, in later years, Jane Canady, you have her on your list, and she could spot any name wrong for some reason. She just had an instinct that she better look that name up. And, quite often, people told us things wrong. Q: You worked out of society's bluebook literally. Most cities had an actual book, but it was in someone's head. A: Someone's head. Yes. -- <br><br> Section 8: Q: When you went out on the occasional stories that you went out on, and you went to meet society people over lunch, was there ever a problem of your lunch tab being picked up by someone else? A: Oh, no. In fact, when I went to the market, every meal was paid for by somebody, some advertiser or something, and we thought nothing of it. We would come home, we had somebody cover the fashion show and food fairs, with tons of stuff that they would distribute to the department. Then, all at once, they said, "No. Not even a free meal." Q: When was that line of demarcation drawn? A: Maybe in the '70's. Quite often, when [a photographer and ] I would go out on a tour of houses, someone would have us as guests in their homes. And we didn't quite have the nerve to say, "We will pay for this." But we didn't tell anybody. But that was about the only free meal you would take if somebody was entertaining in her home. Q: Of course, the newspaper was aware that, prior to this rule, that you would be getting "freebies." A: Oh, yes. They didn't care. And I don't know what started that ethics feeling, but we were told in no uncertain terms, "No more freebies." Q: Do you think, in retrospect, that there was a quid pro quo at all? That getting a huge fruit basket might have... A: I have a lot of PR friends, furniture PR friends. I wouldn't run a picture of theirs if it wasn't good. But, if I have five good ones, I might pick hers because I liked her. Not for what they gave us, because it wasn't that much. We were on expense accounts. We could have bought our meals. But, I think the friendship with the PR people did influence, and probably still does to some extent. But, you couldn't run too many pictures from Flexsteel [Flexsteel Industries, Inc.] just because you liked the PR woman and get away with it. Eventually, some editor would say, "How come?" Q: Did any of the home furnishing manufacturers suggest that they could give your furniture? A: Yes, in those days, they used to give it to us for cost. Wholesale prices. Some people took it. I never did. I couldn't even afford the wholesale price, actually, because they were usually very expensive things. And, clothes. You could buy clothes. Sears, here, would quite often give a reporter an outfit just as a thank you gift. And we took it and nobody cared. Nobody said, "Don't." Q: Do you think that, in your work, that you changed taste in Des Moines. That people read your column about furnishings, say, and began looking at different styles and experimenting with new kinds of furniture. A: That was, of course, what we hoped they did. And all the home magazines because women do like to see pictures of what is on the market. And evidently, the paper thought it was worth while to send us to various markets. Class member: Do you have any sense whether you were effective there? A: I never knew for sure. The stores liked it. Class member: Did they call you up and ask you where they could buy this kind of stuff? A: Oh, yes. We had a mail service and a phone service and got lots of calls about various items. The advertising department liked it, although we were not supposed to work too closely with them in those days either. Class member: You never considered yourself as working for the advertising department? A: No. No. In fact, most of the managing editors through the years would not let an advertising salesman in the newsroom for fear he was in there trying to influence someone. Class member: So you met them in a bar? [laughs] A: We knew them. In fact, most of them went to the markets, too, and they were happy if I would go around and shake hands with the manufacturers that they were interested in. But they didn't say, "Run a story on it or do anything with it." They didn't dare do that. Class member: Did you go out on sales calls with a sales person? A: At the market, the sales person was usually a friend of mine or somebody I knew quite well, so he would take me out to dinner and maybe a manufacturer would be along and we would talk about his line of furniture. And if I thought it was worth a story, I would use it. And you would take a second look at their things. Q: Was that frequent, or every now and then? A: Every time I went to market, I got taken out to dinner by our advertising salesmen there. And then, he would say, "Would you drop in and see Drexel's line," because he had an ad probably coming up from them. And so, I would, and usually it would be something worth writing about, so I would. Class member: How many times a year did you go to market? A: Two times for years and then, in more recent years...I just quit last year. I just went once a year then in later years. But, at first, it was in Chicago and then that market died and I went to Dallas and now it is High Point, North Carolina. Which is enormous. A whole town of market buildings. Q: Could you talk for a minute about the sense of what it meant to be such an important player or person in Des Moines? What it meant for you? You were no longer a wife and a mother, you were a celebrity in town. People knew who you were and you were sought out and, for better or for worse, if people wanted to get in the paper, if they knew you, they might have had a better chance. A: Well, I guess I didn't realize that. I didn't have enough influence in anything but Home Furnishings for years. And then, in the beginning, I wasn't the Society editor. We had another woman who did that then. And, actually, most people thought my husband was the smart one in the family. He was a sports writer for years and did baseball, so at parties, he was the one that everybody talked to and wanted to know about who was going to win the World Series. I don't think we realized that we were known. Q: George Mills yesterday said this to us. "The paper was our religion. We were to show the world the Register was a great paper." Did you feel a part of that? A: We thought we were a great paper, yes. We hated to make a mistake. We tried to get it as perfect as possible. And we did think it was a wonderful paper. Q: Was the paper your religion? A: I wouldn't say that. And I don't think it was exactly...I mean, George had a life beyond the paper, too. But, I loved getting up and going to work every day. Class member: I have more questions about the ethics. Was there grumbling throughout the newsroom? What types of things in other departments did they receive from that? A: My husband always got a lot of liquor at Christmas time in the sports department from gamblers and people who wanted, not only news, but tips on things. When I had my second baby, there was a knock on the door and these big, burly men came in with the biggest baby buggy and a case of beer from Lou Farrell. I don't know if you know that name. He was a prominent gambler. At one time, a member of Al Capone's gang. I didn't tell anybody about this gift, but I kept it. [laughs] I think all through the paper, you got little gifts now and then. But, most of these people, you were friendly with, too. You had them to dinner or things like that. Class member: Was there grumbling in the newsroom when that was ended? A: I think, for a few years, people took them anyway and didn't say anything. But, it was sort of a national trend. I think this managing editor's meeting took care of the whole country and pretty soon, they quit giving things. The manufacturers realized that people were returning them. If you came home with something, or something was sent to the office, they sent it back. I don't think there is much of that that goes on now, but I don't know whether...I think reporters may go out to dinner with somebody occasionally. Things like that. -- <br><br> Section 9: Let's see if there is anything here. Oh, stories that didn't get published. A big mistake. I was women's editor one year and Peggy Hippee was a reporter on a job. And she was doing a story about nutting, gathering nuts in the fall. We didn't have any sack to put them in, so she went down to the mail room and got a couple of mail sacks. When it came out in the paper, there was the U.S. Postal Service [label in the picture]. The managing editor at that time was Basil "Stuffy" Walters, who later became a very famous editor of the Chicago Tribune. He came bellowing back. This was so much against the law. They took all the papers off the trucks and scratched that [the label] out. Put [made] new plates and printed them all over again. You could hear him yell all over that floor at us two young women who didn't know what it was all about. A: And went out the door. [We cried all weekend, sure we would lose our jobs. Monday morning, Mr. Walters came to our office] and said, "You both are going to get a raise in your next paycheck." We about fell over because...he wanted to say, "I am sorry I was yelling at you," but he couldn't quite go that far because he thought we deserved it. So, we each got a two dollar raise. -- <br><br> Section 10: Q: What was your exiting salary? Do you recall? How much were you paid when you left the paper? A: By then, I was paid just about as much as my husband was. I can't remember how much it was. But, our salaries, women's salaries, went up over the years. Maybe for the last twenty years I worked there. The first twenty or thirty, they were much lower. And now, I am sure some of the women are paid more than some of the men. There wasn't a woman on the copy desk, the news copy desk, until the war and then there weren't enough men, so several women did work there. Class member: Can you tell us more about wartime and what it was like to be in the newsroom? A: During a good part of that, I was home having babies. But, my husband was working there and it was, women and short staff, it was difficult. Then, I think there was a strike by the mail room during the war. But we still got out a paper. Everybody who ever worked there was asked to come in and type it. Mimeograph it. And send it around to all the subscribers. Just two sheets. And, there was a shortage of everything during the war. Ink and paper. And manpower, of course. Class member: Was there such a recycling newspapers during the war? A: I would think in those days there was much of that. We certainly saved copy paper and didn't use it if we...didn't throw it away. Things like that. But the main thing, I think, was that a lot more women had an opportunity to get into the newsroom. Class member: After the war, did they hang around? A: Yes. There were women on the copy desk then. And a lot of women reporters in the newsroom. And I think that was when they started campaigning for equal rights. We had a...the newspaper guild tried to come in and all the young people wanted it. I think it scared the company into raising all the women's salaries. We voted it out by one vote. We voted not to join the guild. Class member: Did you have other guild pushes on when you were there? A: I don't know. Just that one time. And they worked for a long time and really had a lot of people convinced. I wasn't convinced, because the young people were talking, I was getting toward retirement age then, talking about doing away with pensions and taking the money and saving it themselves, which I knew they wouldn't do. And, of course, the salaries there were comparable to the guild salaries, so they didn't really have enough selling points to convince people. The impact of technological changes. That is the biggest thing that has happened to newspapers, of course, Q: Talk about that. What it was like to go from typewriter to computer. A: Well, first we went to electric typewriters because the computer could read that with scanners. That was hard. For some reason, by the time we got into computers, we had gotten used to the change. But it was pretty hard. They gave us all a short course, of course. The young people took to it right away. My son just can't imagine writing anything except on a computer. But, it took me a long time. Q: When you file your copy now, it is all on a word processor. On a computer? Or do you use a typewriter? A: I just got a computer. My son finally installed one for me. Figured I would use it. I haven't really used it a lot at home. But I had to go down to the paper, even when I was free lancing, and put it into the computer there. So, I had to learn that much. But I don't think I depended on it. And now they do everything, pagination and layout the pages. Do absolutely everything that way. A lot of things that are done in other papers that we haven't gotten into yet at the Register. -- <br><br> Section 11: Q: If you were a young newswoman today, would you want to be doing Home Furnishings? A: Yes. I like it. And am still planning to do some free lancing on it. Q: The thrill of covering crime and politics and be a fly on the wall when there are important leaders in town doesn't hold appeal to you. MB: No, although when Mrs. Nixon came to town, I was thrilled to go and cover that with a whole bunch of other newspaper people. But, I never thought that was something that I could do. Q: You wanted to do, or could do. A: I didn't think I would be able to do it. Q: Why? A: I didn't think I was smart enough, I guess. I thought it took more political knowledge to cover the statehouse than I had. And, somehow, I felt more at home in homemaking things. Class member: Do you read those political stories? A: Oh, yes, I do. But I still don't think I could write them and I never really wanted to. Class member: Do you think papers should be covering Bill Clinton's [President William Clinton] saga with his girlfriends? A: I read it. We all read it. But it has gone overboard, I think, too far. Class member: That wouldn't be in your society pages in the '40's, would it? A: Oh, no. And I don't think it would even be in the news, in the regular news section, either. We didn't even run things about Kennedy [President John F. Kennedy] or Eisenhower [President Dwight Eisenhower] or anybody. About their sexual peccadillos. Q: Let's go back to Pat Nixon for a minute. Can you take us back to that day when you covered Pat Nixon? A: They had a tea at the governor's mansion. Billie Ray was the wife then. Just a couple of people from the Register and a couple of people from Indianola and other small towns. It was fun. I didn't write the story. Somebody else, whoever the other reporter was, did that. But, I enjoyed talking to celebrities. I once sat next to a movie star. But I didn't want to write stories about them. Class member: Who was the movie star? A: He is dead now. He did a cookbook, which is why I happened to be there. Vincent Price. He was charming. Class member: Did you meet Ronald Reagan when he was a journalist in town? A: I knew him when I was in Drake. He was kind of a young bachelor about town. I didn't know him well, but I was at parties where he was. I thought he was awfully nice and kind of dumb. Q: But awfully good looking. A: Yes. And good company. We would sit around and everybody at the party would be listening to him. Q: What told you he was kind of dumb? A: We thought he was. All the girls. He was. He wasn't interested in much but sports at that stage of his life. But, everybody liked him. Q: Did you ever think he would grow up to be president? A: No. No. Q: What happened? A: He went to Hollywood. And he was talented, to some extent. He was not a big star in Hollywood, but he was successful there. Then he got into the Screen Actor's Guild and, from there, into politics. But I don't think he ever was really awfully smart. But, everybody liked him. -- <br><br> Section 12: Class member: Back to the Register. Was the Register a newspaper where young people worked for a few years and then moved on to the Chicago Tribune or New York or Washington, or was it a newspaper in which people found their niche and stayed? A: Look at all the old timers you have been able to find. A lot of people did stay there a long time. It is in recent years that they seem to come and go fast, and I, in fact, I think we must have a dozen people with the Register for emeritus in the last few years. But a lot of them did go on. I don't think there were that many opportunities, either, to go to the New York Times or to go to other papers as there is now. But, a lot of them stayed. -- <br><br> Section 13: Open Discussion.