a biography of the day-doris fleeson (trailblazing political journalist)

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BIOGRAPHY of Doris Fleeson

Doris Fleeson was a newspaper reporter and syndicated columnist in Washington D.C. for nearly 40 years, beginning in 1933, and was known as an aggressive political reporter. Fleeson was born in Sterling, Kansas on May 20, 1901. Fleeson graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in journalism in 1923. During her time at KU, Fleeson was a correspondent for the University Daily Kansan; her first newspaper job was with The Pittsburg (Kan.) Sun. Fleeson was a member of newspaper staffs in both Evanston, Illinois, and Long Island, New York before obtaining a postion at the New York Daily News. Within a few years she was assigned to the newspaper's Albany bureau and became acquainted with Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose Administration she later covered in Washington. On September 28, 1930, she was married to John O'Donnell, a fellow Daily News reporter. Their daughter, also named Doris, was born two years later. Fleeson joined her husband in The Daily News' Washington Bureau in 1933. Together they started the "Capitol Stuff" column. At one time, Fleeson was the sole permanent woman member of the press entourage who accompanied President Roosevelt on his campaign tours.

Fleeson and O'Donnell divorced in 1942. The next year Fleeson left The Daily News and went to Europe as a war correspondent for The Woman's Home Companion. After the war she returned to Washington and began a column on political affairs, which appeared first in The Washington Star. In 1958, Fleeson married Dan Kimball, who was President Harry Truman's Secretary of the Navy from 1951-53, and also President and later Chairman of the Board for Aerojet General Corporation until 1969. By the time Fleeson went into semi-retirement in 1967, her twice-a-week column was distributed by United Features Syndicate, Inc., to 90 newspapers. Her reporting over the years earned her a number of awards and citations, including the Raymond Clapper award in 1954 from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. A champion of women's rights, she was an active member of the Women's National Press Club and an inveterate foe of the National Press Club, which did not admit women members.

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http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrlead/ksrl.ua.fleesondoris.xml

'Doris Fleeson' Blazed a Trail for Women Journalists

Starched-collar Kansas didn’t know what to make of Doris Fleeson.
There was never any argument regarding her achievement. She was clearly the only member of the Sterling, Kansas, High School Class of 1918 whose syndicated political column by the 1950s was distributed to 120 newspapers, who maintained homes in Georgetown and Palm Springs, and whose closest friends included Eleanor Roosevelt and H.L. Mencken.
In 1927, at age 26, she had joined the staff of the New York Daily News, considered the country’s first successful tabloid.

After World War II, she became the first nationally syndicated woman political columnist, writes author Carolyn Sayler, producing perhaps 5,500 columns over the next 22 years. That made her the colleague and competitor of editorial page heavyweights such as Walter Lippmann and Marquis Childs, whom she, given her tabloid background, sometimes scooped.
“I belonged to the ‘who the hell reads the second paragraph’ school of journalism,” Fleeson sometimes said.

In this admirable and clear-eyed biography, Sayler restores to Fleeson, who died in 1970, the relevance she deserves. While the book details the journalist’s encounters with several presidents as well as the influence she once wielded in Washington, the principal story told here is how Fleeson finessed and ultimately redefined the role of women in daily newspapers.
Her path into the male-dominated newsrooms of the ‘20s was by way of the roles then routinely reserved for women, such as designated “sob sister” or “stunt girl”.
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More than 30 years later, during the 1960 presidential campaign, some political writers speculated that Jacqueline Kennedy’s pregnancy had been carefully timed in part to render her less worldly and cosmopolitan to voters. Fleeson disagreed, angered that such wisdom could be considered conventional because of the attractive appearance of a candidate’s wife.

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http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/128341-doris-fleeson-blazed-a-trail-for-women-journalists/