The Press: Flight from Fluff

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L.A. Times Women's Editor Jean Taylor is determined "to develop coverage that will reflect the contemporary California lifestyle, which is different from any other." She usually succeeds; social trends often start in the West, and "View" has tried to keep pace with coverage of swinging singles, unwed mothers, communes, the counterculture's ebb and flow. Though talking more about subjects like abortion, "View" still leans heavily on fashion and society news. What has declined in the section is the number of marriage announcements.

Connubial Copy. Many women's editors across the country would like to copy the L.A. Times and a few other big-city dailies that now use wedding announcements as fillers, if at all. It becomes almost an ideological issue, because these announcements, except in small communities, can only cover the children of the affluent. The usual yardstick at the L.A. Times, says one staffer, is "Yes to the daughter of the owner of the International House of Pancakes chain; No to the daughter of the owner of a single House of Pancakes franchise." But L.A. Times Associate Editor James Bellows is realistic about why his paper can move away from marriage items, while smaller papers cannot: "If you live in a town like Charleston, S.C., where everybody has lived for 100 years, you could not pull out the brides because everybody wants to read about each other."

Even the New York Times still runs yards of connubial copy, mostly on Sunday, when the brides break up acres of retail advertising. Nevertheless, since "Family/Style" Editor Charlotte Curtis took over in 1965, the tone of her 4-F page—"family, food, fashions, furnishings"—has changed drastically. She is bored with social chitchat but fascinated with sociology. Says Curtis: "To look at current phenomena—the geodesic dome, plastic furniture and the family—that's where the big revolution is happening. The basic overturning of the family is just as important as the overturning of Lyndon Johnson."

The Times is not always as avant in print as Curtis' remark indicates.

There is still an occasional feature about that busy housewife who does it all, or a piece about the famous man's little woman who, it turns out, chooses his neckties. But the page is well worth reading—for men as well as women—because of articles about the changing status of Arab women in Israel; where to eat in Tancanh, South Viet Nam; the retired madam who knows she "saved a bunch of marriages from collapse"; and the outdated moral standards used by a New York family court judge in a child custody case.