Maurine Beasley

Beasley was born in Sedalia, Missouri.[1] Beasley earned her BA in History, Journalism and Secondary English Teaching from University of Missouri in Columbia.[2][3] While at University she worked at the affiliated newspaper, the Columbia Missourian, ignoring the menial stories she was ordered to write in order to cover bigger cases.[4] Beasley was one of the top performing students in her class however she was put off journalism by sexist hiring practices, turning instead to teaching in Grand Rapids, Michigan.[1] In 1959 she got her first job at a newspaper, working for six weeks at the Kalamazoo Gazette. Through personal contacts she then moved to The Kansas City Star where she became education editor until leaving in 1962. She pursued her master's degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, with results which put her as third best in the class, and subsequently took up a job as a staff writer at The Washington Post. She considers her ten years at the post as an unhappy period of her life, eventually leaving in 1973. After resigning Beasley finished her PhD in American Civilization from George Washington University, entitled 'The First Women Washington Correspondents', supervised by Letitia Woods Brown.[1][2][3]

Beasley joined the teaching staff at the University of Maryland back in 1974, and was promoted to assistant professor in 1975.[1] Beasley described herself as the 'token woman' of the faculty, and indeed was not joined on the tenure-track by any other women at the department until about a decade later.[1]

She was a founding member of the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA), and elected their president in 1989 for one year.[1] They awarded her the Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History in 1997, the highest honour the society bestows.[2][5] She was also president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), who awarded Beasley with the 2008 Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award.[2][6]

Beasley has also undertaken teaching posts at Jinan University, China as part of a Fulbright Program grant.[2][3]

Beasley has written about the history of women in journalism and the public spotlight, including with reference to First Ladies of the United States.[7] She has been interviewed by Book TV about her publications on these topics.[8] She was consulted and interviewed about the role of female war correspondents as well as 'Women Pages' in newspapers for the documentary No Place For A Woman about women reporting on WW2.[9] Her book Taking Their Place: Documentary History of Women and Journalism 2nd Edition (co-written with Sheila Gibbons) was awarded a Textbook Excellence Award in 2004 by the Text and Academic Authors Association.[10]

She is a scholar of Eleanor Roosevelt, and wrote Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media (1987), Eleanor Roosevelt: Transformative First Lady (2010) and co-edited The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (2000).[11] The latter was selected as a top reference book of 2001 by the reviewers Booklist.

• 1997 Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History from the AJHA.[2]
• 1999 Distinguished Senior Scholar by the American Association of University Women.[12]
• 2000 Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Award.[13]
• 2001 One of the best reference books of the year by Booklist for The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia.[12]
• 2004 Textbook Excellence Award by the Text and Academic Authors Association for Taking Their Place: Documentary History of Women and Journalism 2nd Edition.[10]
• 2008 Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award by the AEJMC.[6]