Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame takes steps to address glaring imbalance

Today a whole bunch of women will take the first steps toward ending a glaring injustice in Kansas.

That injustice centers on how women have been treated in the profession to which they devoted their lives.

And that profession is, I’m sorry to say, that protector of the marginalized, that guardian of equality, that defender of democracy that I also love: The newspaper profession.

This story started last summer when a group of us noticed that the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame has inducted only seven women in its 92-year history. Out of 142 honorees.

Now, no one should feel obligated to care about newspaper awards, any more than one outside of the fields should care about awards for sausage makers, candlestick makers or air conditioning salespersons. Although, where would we be without air conditioning?

Newspapers and all media until recently were ruthless discriminators. Andrea Mitchell, a star reporter for NBC News, wrote a column recently in The Washington Post telling how in 1967 she started in radio at a station where bosses told her that women didn’t belong in newsrooms, because they would be “disruptive.”

She quoted Katharine Graham, the Washington Post publisher who risked her career supporting her reporters during that newspaper’s Watergate coverage. Graham also wrote about how one night in 1972, she hunched down in her car to watch female journalists picketing the Washington DC annual Gridiron Club dinner. Male journalists got to put on white ties and roll up to the door in limousines; women journalists were barred.

There has been much progress, but there’s still a way to go in making the playing field more level.

I knew nothing about the lack of women in the Hall of Fame until last summer, when I got a call.

The Kansas Press Association had just elected Jean Hays, my retired former editor, into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame.

The association’s executive director, Emily Bradbury, asked me to give a speech introducing Jean at her induction ceremony. I was delighted: Jean was for decades a formidable investigative/environmental reporter for The Wichita Eagle, and later a beloved senior editor in our newsroom.

While researching my speech I called up the Hall of Fame website and scrolled through images of previous winners. Within moments, I thought: “Holy crap.”

I started counting. I saw that the Hall of Fame, founded in 1931, would have only seven women out of 142 members once Jean was inducted.

I already knew, from many women, that this kind of thing is familiar. But my discovery bothered me because it happens in a profession that has always stood witness for the marginalized.

Also, I worried: If those seven out of 142 numbers ever got widely publicized, it might undermine the Kansas Press Association, which sponsors the Hall of Fame. The KPA has a 160-year history of fighting for free speech and the press, especially on behalf of smaller newspapers lacking lawyers and other resources available to The Wichita Eagle or The Kansas City Star.

Many of you have read or heard, for example, about how police in Marion County raided the Marion County Record’s newspaper office and the owners’ home, possibly contributing to the death the next day of the 98-year-old owner, Joan Meyer.

But then the KPA charged into that atrocity. It was the KPA’s executive director, Emily Bradbury, who sounded national alarms.

Anyway, at Jean’s induction last October, I learned what she truly thought. Just before I walked to the podium to introduce her, she leaned over and said: “You need to say those numbers out loud up there.”

I took a breath. And I said: “No. This moment should only be about honoring you.”

But, after the ceremony, Jean and I approached Emily.

“Could we ask a couple of questions?”

Emily seized on our talk; she already knew about those numbers and the harm they might do. But it quickly became apparent that while Emily anxiously wanted something done, the KPA didn’t have the resources — it was stretched thin supporting beleaguered newspapers.

So, I took another breath. And I volunteered — and I asked a small group (of women) to help identify those who had been overlooked.

One good thing led to another. Instead of inducting the usual four or five new Hall of Fame members, as they do every year, the KPA will induct 34 — including 29 women. Women will now make up 23% of Hall membership, instead of 5%. Not enough, but a start.

The group didn’t choose just anybody. Three new honorees are Black women: Vickie Walton-James, Patricia Weems Gaston and Wichita’s own Bonita Gooch. They will be only the second, third and fourth people of color so honored, taking steps to right another wrong.

Three new inductees — Weems Gaston, Colleen McCain Nelson and Melinda Henneberger — have won Pulitzer prizes. And Walton-James is a big deal: She’s the managing editor for news at NPR.

Among the group who identified the possible nominees was Nancy Horst, a former star Emporia Gazette reporter.

Nancy and I called people all over the state, all over the country — Kansas women or women with strong Kansas ties, who have done amazing work. We interviewed, researched — then wrote more than 30 nomination letters. We lobbied the KPA board, and the Hall of Fame voters who annually choose new members.

We learned that exclusion wasn’t always about sexism: The KPA for most of its 160 years has been that champion of smaller papers. Those papers have been run mostly by white guys in white communities. Past hall of fame members, by their own rules, were chosen mostly from those ranks. So, exclusion wasn’t always by male design.

But in many ways, it really was that.

Many small papers, for example, were (and are) run by husband-wife teams. But it was almost always the dudes who got selected for honors. Wives did equal work without equal recognition.

One of the first calls I made when I started this work was to Sarah Kessinger, publisher of the Marysville Advocate. I’d grown up near Marysville, in north-central Kansas, and knew what a vibrant newspaper her Advocate is.

Sarah has operated it since 2012. Before that, it belonged to Sarah’s parents, Howard and Sharon Kessinger, who spent decades covering meetings, selling ads, developing film — and sometimes risking their newspaper’s survival by writing editorials criticizing Marysville powers that be. (You do that in a small town, and you risk your newspaper. But the Kessingers did it anyway).

Here’s a story Sarah told me:

Her father, Howard, was selected to the Hall of Fame in 2006.

Sarah called the KPA. She urged that Sharon be inducted also: “Because Mom did everything Dad ever did. All of it. Everything Dad did, Mom did.”

This was rejected. “We like to keep things simple,” she was told.

This wasn’t Sarah’s first encounter with being treated as second class.

She spent 12 years as a reporter covering the Kansas Legislature. Sarah, and another fellow Harris News Group reporter, were the only women in the legislature’s press pool. It was a large pool then.

“And we knew that the men had a name for us,” Sarah said. “They referred to us as “The Harris Girls.”

“It was not meant as a compliment.”

Ugh. Is our playing field level? Ask Sarah.

As the emcee at the Hall of Fame induction today, the first people I will call to the podium will be Sarah and Sharon Kessinger.

I suspect everybody will cheer when I say their names.

And so the last shall be first.

At least for a day.