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Words & ReflectionsA Woman at Odds With Her TimesCharlotte Curtis is portrayed as a controversial pioneer in journalism.A Woman of the Times:Journalism, Feminism, and the Career of Charlotte CurtisMarilyn S. GreenwaldOhio University Press. 275 Pages. $26.95.By Maria HensonOn June 20, 1986, a decisionarguably 14 years in the makingat The New York Timestook effect: “Beginning today, The NewYork Times will use Ms. as an honorificin its news and editorial columns. Ms.has not been used because of belief ithad not passed sufficiently into thelanguage to be accepted. The Timesbelieves now Ms. has become a part ofthe language and is changing its policy.”Gloria Steinem had hounded herfriend and Executive Editor A.M.Rosenthal for years to change the policyso that women no longer appeared inthe Times as strictly “Miss” or “Mrs.”When Rosenthal sent her the memo hehad written to the staff about the policychange, Steinem framed it. The firstday “Ms.” appeared, the famous feministand several women went to theTimes to deliver a bouquet of flowersto Rosenthal in appreciation.The policy change occurred nothanks to Charlotte Curtis, the first topfemale editor at the Times and the firstwoman whose name appeared on themasthead. Here’s what she thought ofthe Ms. idea in 1972:“This afternoon the Managing Editoris going to have a meeting to takeup the matter of Ms., pronounced miz,the new title for ladies. The liberatedones want to be called Ms. I don’t. I likebeing called Miss. When we did a storyabout Betty Friedan, the feminist, wecalled her Ms. And her mother, whoappeared in the same story, we calledMrs., because she doesn’t want to beMs. either.“It’s going to be like blacks. In thetransition days of black liberation, therewere blacks, Negroes, and coloredpeople. There still are. It will probablybe the same with women. Women willaggressively want to be Ms. Some willequally aggressively insist on Miss orMrs. Anything that’s pronounced mizsounds like poor blacks in the South,and that’s very distasteful to me.”In “A Woman of the Times,” authorMarilyn S. Greenwald describes thecontradictions in the life of Curtis. Shepraises her for paving the way for otherwomen at the Times but acknowledgesthat Curtis paid a price for her ambivalencetoward the women’s movementin losing the friendship and respect offemale colleagues. Today, Curtis is nota name widely remembered, as theauthor notes, because she was not aself-promoter and worked at the Times(1961-1986) before it was common tosee journalists transformed into celebritieson television talk shows and cable.I would add that she might be more…Curtis paid a price for her ambivalencetoward the women’s movement in losing thefriendship and respect of female colleagues.widely remembered had she taken avocal role in the feminist movementboth inside and outside the newsroom.Curtis tried to have it both ways. Shewanted to break into the old boys’network at the Times, and she did sothrough innovative writing and editingand savvy friendships with the men atthe top: Clifton Daniel, Managing Editor;A.O. “Punch” Sulzberger, Publisher,and Harrison Salisbury, foreign correspondent,author and the first editor ofthe op-ed page. (When she was demotedin 1982 after eight years as OpedEditor, she wrote a friendly and selfdeprecatingmemo to the publisher,thanking him for his support and the“prettiest office” in the building, thenNieman Reports / Fall 1999 67