{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.022204599524187154, 'fraction_numerical': 0.008326724821570182, 'mean_word_length': 5.276119402985074, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 1, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
"A Tortuous Route Growing Up": The Rise of Women in the American Society of Newspaper Editors

One of the overlooked historical milestones in American journalism took place in April 1987 when Katherine W. Fanning of The Christian Science Monitor became the first woman president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). In assuming the post following fifty-six men in the sixty-five-year history of the professional group, another Boston editor observed that ASNE and Fanning had taken "a tortuous route growing up." According to former ASNE president Thomas Winship, "it took some 60 years of maturing before the all-male ASNE hierarchy could bring itself to elect a woman as its president."1 Although delayed by individual, institutional, social, cultural, political, and public relations obstacles, the tortuous process leading up to Fanning's election is important to consider. The period beginning in 1922 provides clues as to why the mainly male establishment first discouraged, then encouraged, women into its inner sanctums of membership and leadership. Minutes, ASNE Proceedings, interviews, and its own house organ reveal much about the organization that elected Fanning and why it failed to respond positively to the deeply gendered prejudices of American society and exert greater institutional leadership on behalf of women editors and other minority journalists.2 The purpose of this research is to review the major personalities who helped or hindered women in an organization serving as a middle ground between reporters and publishers. It describes the winding path provided women to gain acceptance in editor's offices and in ASNE. The study also cites various representative articles to demonstrate the individual, societal, and institutional attitudes existing during this period and how they discouraged editors from supporting gender diversity. Ironically, the key staff gatekeeper for the male organization during this period was a female, Alice Fox Pitts, who served as a secretary, executive secretary, and, with her husband, as editor of the ASNE house organ from 1931 until 1963. A graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, she worked as a reporter and editor in New Bedford, Washington, and Buffalo before being recruited to handle the administrative duties of the fledgling ASNE for more than three decades.3 Despite her key position, however, Pitts appears to have been limited in accelerating change on behalf of women. Indeed, the records and her writings indicate