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What a difference 125 years makes. Perhaps nowhere is the evolution more apparent than in reviewing the old-style “Society” page, a collection of haughty, overblown descriptions of debutante balls, fund-raising galas and other events attended by the area’s well-known and well-to-do. A ’50s-era Journal handout, “For the Club Reporter,” spelled out the rules for submitting social club “news.” Among the requirements: “Use The Journal style in listing names. It is Mrs. John J. Jones, never Mrs. Betty Jones.” Such coverage and such references were staples for decades, but by the 1960s, the local and national social climate was undergoing massive changes. Women were entering the workplace, seeking equal footing with men, and flowery descriptions of wedding dresses were falling out of favor. The society page became more or less a listing of events. Eventually, it evolved into the very different kind of lifestyle section called Tempo. Like many other institutions, The Journal was caught behind the times amid the rapid social change in the ’60s. In 1961, Patricia A. McCarty — now a Journal copy editor — received the following letter after interviewing with recruiters from The Journal’s corporate parent at Michigan State University: "As you know, our campus interviewing was directed solely toward recruitment for our training program. And for obvious reasons, the training program is limited to men." McCarty said it’s almost impossible to conceive of such a response today. “And I got those kind of letters, some much worse, from other papers,” she said. Mildred Lawrence, The Journal’s first female “city desk” reporter, was hired in the late 1920s. But she was limited to covering such agencies as the Chamber of Commerce, the Boy Scouts and social services. Police and court beats were considered much too tough and dangerous for women. Judy Samelson became a Journal assistant metro editor in the 1970s, the first woman to reach that rank. She later went on to head the Mott Foundation’s communications office. Allan R. Wilhelm, who held many jobs at The Journal including news editor, said he remembers when opportunities for women started to improve in the 1960s. “In the mid-1960s, we had a woman (Eleanor Brownell) covering the board of education, and that was a major, major beat at the time,” Wilhelm said. Since then, The Journal has had many female reporters and editors, including current managing editor Brooke Rausch and Tempo Editor Cookie Wascha. Still, The Journal didn’t drop the practice of using courtesy titles for women, such as “Miss” or “Mrs.,” until the 1980s. Few papers, with The New York Times a notable exception, use the titles today. Just as the door opened wider for women, the 1960s saw the arrival of The Journal’s first black reporter, Edwyna Goodwyn Anderson. When Anderson arrived, most blacks who worked at 200 E. First St. held janitorial and maintenance jobs. She worked at a time when housing advertisements in her employer’s own pages appeared in “white” and “colored” sections, reminiscent of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Anderson worked at The Journal from 1963 to 1965 as a news reporter and features writer. She later became the first black woman admitted to the bar in Genesee County as well as a Michigan public service commissioner. The 1960s produced a sea change in the area of race. As “colored” became an unacceptable term, The Journal dropped it from its pages in the 1960s. More black reporters arrived in the 1970s, including Craig Carter, now director of communications for the Flint School District. Mitchell Hensford, a black Flint resident who is now a regular Journal reader, remembers feeling very differently about the paper in the 1960s. “They had the segregated classifieds, and they were kind of against the black community,” Hensford said. “But like a lot of institutions, they had to change.” Youth culture also underwent a major metamorphosis in the 1960s, as the “counterculture” began to dominate radio and television. Images of long-haired “hippies” and Afro-wearing social reformers were as common as pictures of American troops in the jungles of southeast Asia. Flint’s most successful rock group — Grand Funk Railroad — released its first album in 1969, but not until the group’s superstardom in 1971 did The Journal devote much space to covering Grand Funk and the angrier, more rebellious rock sounds that were starting to dominate. Earlier, the focus had been on bouncy Motownish acts and happy rock, such as early Beatles recordings. “The culture changed for everyone in the mid-’60s,” Wilhelm said. “We had to ferment like everyone else.” Over the years, The Journal’s features section has reflected all kinds of pop culture changes — from the rise of disco in the mid-1970s to the premiere of Star Wars in 1977 (the story was later serialized in The Journal) to the ascendance of hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s, including Flint’s own MC Breed. It’s a far cry from what reporter Kim Crawford found recently in researching a story about black jazz and blues artists who performed here in the ’40s and ’50s and earlier. People in the black community recall the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf and T-Bone Walker performing here routinely, often jamming at after-hours clubs. “There was no record of that in this newspaper that I could find,” Crawford said. “I just don’t think it was on anyone’s radar screen.” Instead, The Journal’s music coverage centered on big bands playing at the IMA Auditorium, “which certainly would have been big news.” As far as covering the black performers, “there were weeklies in the black community that may or may not have done this,” Crawford said. Today’s Journal chronicles the continuing dominance of hip-hop, the explosion of teen pop and Latin music, and the dramatic impact of computers on all aspects of the entertainment business. Such features as Bits & PCs and a revamped Entertainer were created to fit changed lifestyles. Randy Frentrup, an 18-year-old who reads Bits&PCs, said the section gets him to do something new: read a newspaper. “I really am not too into the paper, but I read the computer stuff,” he said. “Then I kind of peek through the rest of the paper and see some other things I like. I guess newspapers are pretty cool.”
Staff writer Marlon Vaughn started at The Journal in 1998. He can be reached at (810) 766-6324 or mvaughn@flintjournal.com. 
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