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Words & Reflectionssigning off “Big smooch, Charlotte.”Frankly, the note sounds too smoochiefor my taste.)During her career, she did not rallyto the aid of women in the newsroomwho balked at salary disparities andbarriers to their advancement. Whenwomen journalists filed a sex discriminationlawsuit against the Times in1974, Curtis didn’t participate. In fact,she never thought she was discriminatedagainst in the work force and hadlittle interest in the women’s movementeven during her tenure as editorof the women’s section. Years after thesuit was settled out of court in 1978(the Times publicly acknowledged nowrongdoing but promised to promoteseveral women and paid back wages tothe plaintiffs), some Times women werestill steamed at Curtis.Greenwald writes aboutthe copy editor underwhose name the suit wasfiled and who, despite theyears, remained offendedby Curtis’s decision:“[Betsy] Wade called Charlottea ‘quisling,’ which she defined asa label for a Hitler collaborator meaninga ‘sell-out,’ a ‘rotten bastard’ and‘[one who] usually gets shot.’”The contradictions in Curtis’s lifedate to the beginning, to her childhoodin Columbus, Ohio. She was bornin 1928 to wealthy parents, physicianGeorge Morris Curtis and LucileAtcherson Curtis, a suffragette and thefirst woman to apply for the ForeignService exam after women won theright to vote in 1920. One would thinkgiven the legacy she inherited from thefemale side of her family that CharlotteCurtis would have carried the feministbanner high. From her grandmother,she had been taught that with persistenceshe could achieve anything shewanted. But as a graduate of Vassar in1950, she was expected only to marrythe right man, settle down and have afamily.Curtis did marry but was divorced in1952. That was just not done in Columbusin those days, but she did it anyway,defied convention and threw herselfinto her $40-a-week job as a societyreporter at The Columbus Citizen. AsGreenwald puts it, “It was a life ofcoffee drinking, smoking, and, forsome, heavy gambling and drinking.Charlotte had been a tea drinker herentire life.” She was a union officer forthe Newspaper Guild at the same timeshe served as an officer for the JuniorLeague. She was schooled in propersociety ways, but she didn’t pullpunches in her writing; she scorchedthe powerful, her peers, with her causticasides.No one was surprised when she leftColumbus for a job in the Times’swomen’s section in 1961. There shecontinued her coverage of the highand mighty, which columnist Liz Smithsays was Curtis’s “own kind of ‘NewJournalism.’” My favorite dispatch isCurtis gave a voice to people outsideof the paper who were ordinarypeople with ordinary problems.from a story Curtis wrote four monthsafter she arrived at the Times in whichshe skewers a New York hat maker:“He admits he is a genius and thegreatest couturier-milliner in the world,and he has tried to forget that he wasonce a boy from New Rochelle namedHans Harburger.“And when he talks about himself,which is most of the time, he puts up acolorful and audacious smoke screenof clever phases, shocking tidbits andbig names. ‘I am Mr. John,’ he says overand over again. ‘Mr. John is the dean ofthe industry. I. Magnin rolls out the redcarpet for Mr. John.’”In the book, Punch Sulzberger callsCurtis “to some extent the MaureenDowd of her day.” The accounts of herreporting in the 1960’s support thistheory. As Greenwald notes, both columnists“use details and her story subjects’own words to illustrate their personalitiesand to make them lookfoolish,” and both inject class criticisminto their reporting. Greenwald alsogives Curtis as Op-ed Editor credit forcreating a path for Anna Quindlen,whose columns in the 1980’s and l990’sfeatured observations about the everydaylife of 30-something women andnot commentary solely focused onpolitics of the day. Curtis gave a voiceto people outside of the paper whowere ordinary people with ordinaryproblems. She didn’t reserve the op-edpage exclusively for “official” commentatorsand experts. She published columnsby world leaders alongside commentaryby Yoko Ono and Erica Jong.This was a notable change from thedirection set by Salisbury, her predecessorwho, as the first editor of the opedpage, emphasized “official” voiceson that page.Greenwald concludes it is difficultto gauge Curtis’s long-term contributionsand legacy. I agree. I wanted toshare the author’s unbridledadmiration for hersubject but decided thebook made a strong casethat Charlotte Curtis’s allegianceswere first to herself,then to the men in theinner circle at the Times,and finally to her female colleagues. Ishared the conclusion of some of herTimes co-workers who, Greenwaldwrites, “felt that the woman’s caucusran a distant third in her heart,” at atime when many women journalistswere supporting one another.Curtis died of cancer in 1987. Shedied a pioneer. Her influence was seenboth in the breezy reporting style thatbecame acceptable in some sections ofthe Times and in her stewardship of anop-ed page that offered broader appeal.Given she was the first woman onthe masthead, however, hers was notthe magnificent legacy readers mightimagine. Instead, Curtis’s contributions“should be seen as one link of a chainthat led to change….”— at least that isthe author’s generous conclusion. ■Maria Henson is a Pulitzer Prizewinningeditorial writer and a 1994Nieman Fellow. She currently isDeputy Editorial Page Editor of theAustin American-Statesman.68 Nieman Reports / Fall 1999