Dorothy Jurney (Inducted 1997)

As Women's Editor of the Detroit Free Press and the Miami Herald, and later as Assistant Managing Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jurney was among the first editors in the nation to give prominent play in women's sections to issues such as the Equal Rights Amendment, civil rights and women union organizers.

Jurney assigned her best reporters - including columnist Ellen Goodman -to cover issues ranging from problems in poor black schools to the rising crisis of teenage pregnancy among black unwed mothers, even though her male supervisors generally dismissed such subjects are irrelevant or uninteresting.

After she retired from the Inquirer, Jurney founded the Woman's Network, an editorial talent search firm. She began an annual report on women in news management positions that was published for 10 years by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. That report is continued today by the National Federation of Press Women.

In the early 1980s, Jurney was a media specialist at George Washington University. While there, it was her pioneering project on how newspapers reported on issues important to women that led to a report entitled "New Directions for News." In 1984, the New Directions organization began, with Jurney as the founding chair.