The New England Woman's Press Association (NEWPA) was founded by six Boston newspaper women in 1885 and incorporated in 1890. By the turn of the century it had over 150 members. NEWPA sought not only to bring female colleagues together and further their careers in a male-dominated field, but to use the power of the press for the good of society. The group raised funds for charity and supported women's suffrage and other political causes.
NEWPA was a charter member of both the General Federation of Women's Clubs and the National Federation of Press Women, among other organizations. Notable members included Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. Its last meeting was held in 1982.
History
Founding
In November 1885, Marion A. McBride of the Boston Post sent out a call to other Boston newspaper women to establish a press association. McBride had already been involved in the founding of the Illinois Woman's Press Association and the National Woman's Press Association. Boston was a logical choice for another such group. With 9 daily newspapers and 19 weeklies, it was one of the busiest media centers in the country, but few of its newspapers hired women full time. Most women in the field worked as part-time correspondents and contributors. Their professional opportunities were limited, and they were often treated disrespectfully by their male colleagues.
On November 17, six women met at the office of Boston Herald reporter Sallie Joy White and formed the New England Woman's Press Association (NEWPA). Besides McBride and White, the other women were Helen M. Winslow of the Boston Daily Advertiser, Grace W. Soper of the Boston Daily Journal, Estelle M. Hatch (later Estelle M. H. Merrill) of the Boston Globe, and freelance journalist Cora Stuart Wheeler. White was chosen to be the first president and Hatch the first secretary.
The group met at the headquarters of the Woman's Journal until it outgrew that space and moved to the Parker House Hotel.
Mission and membership
Over the next year, Hatch recruited a dozen more women to the organization. Alice Stone Blackwell of the Woman's Journal headed a committee that drew up a constitution and bylaws. To make clear that NEWPA was a professional association and not a social club, membership was limited to women living in New England who were "regularly and professionally connected with the press of New England, either as writers, editors, business managers, or correspondents—all, in short, for whom work on the press is a vocation, and not an avocation, a breadwinning occupation, and not an amusement." The group was incorporated on September 15, 1890. Starting in 1891, associate members were admitted, but not allowed to vote.
Most of NEWPA's members were from the Boston area; others hailed from Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Nova Scotia. They included proprietors of local newspapers such as the Winthrop Visitor, editors of household, fashion, society, art, and literature departments, and freelance journalists who contributed to many different newspapers and magazines. Lillian A. Lewis, the first African-American woman reporter in Boston, made national headlines when she was admitted to the association in 1889. In the 1920s, NEWPA began accepting radio script writers, public relations writers, playwrights, and other "kindred women writers." The association maintained an average of more than 120 members until the mid-1940s.
NEWPA's constitution served as a model for many other women's press organizations over the next twenty years; for example, the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association, founded in 1890, modeled its constitution after NEWPA's, and went on to become a leader of the women's movement in California. NEWPA's object was "to promote acquaintance and good-fellowship among newspaper women" and to use the power of the press to promote "good objects in social, philanthropic, and reformatory lines." In other words, it was a professional association, but one that aimed to make a positive difference in the community. As such, it was part of the women's club movement. It became a charter member of the General Federation of Women's Clubs in 1890; the International Federation of Women's Press Clubs in 1891; the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs in 1895; and the National Federation of Press Women in 1938.