More than “little old ladies going gliding”: The Canadian press and women’s interest news

During the 1960s to the 1990s, the Canadian Press (CP) news agency struggled with how to share news of interest to female readers with its member newspapers. CP’s senior news managers and their newspaper colleagues across Canada disagreed about the journalistic value of gendered content, or even how to define it, depending on their own newsroom cultures as well as their understanding of the preferences of readers in their regions. The news agency’s internal documents and interviews with editors reveal that regional differences among editors and audiences had a great influence on how these production changes were received at CP’s member newspapers and whether they considered women’s issues and interests “hard” news, “soft” news, or of no consequence at all