pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Newpaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson is a hefty biography of the heiress to the Chicago Tribune dynasty, and formidable newspaperwoman in her own right. Smith covers the family history beginning well before Cissy’s birth in 1881, through her death in 1948. I’m just beginning the book, and actually had never heard of Cissy before, but so far she is proving to be a most interesting subject – meaning, as is usually the case with the most interesting subjects, that she is a controversial and difficult-to-like figure. My teaser comes from page 347:

Although Cissy was the first and only woman editor of any newspaper in the Hearst chain, she was by no means the Chief’s sole female employee. The son of a formidable mother, William Randolph Hearst himself did not share the low estimate of feminine competence that his Washington Herald staff had betrayed when Cissy invaded their city room.

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: biography, history, journalism, nonfiction |