Clementine Paddleford: America's First Food Journalist | The New School

THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu

Clementine Paddleford was the first American journalist to take food seriously. In her legendary columns for the New York Herald Tribune and This Week Magazine, she pioneered a smart, sassy reporting style that managed to elevate food writing from the dull formulas of home economists to must-read material. Flying around the country, sometimes in a Piper Cub plane, which she herself piloted, she worked tirelessly to gather the best recipes from cooks in every region. That meant seeking out the best cheesecake in New York City, hunkering down in chili parlors in Texas, and touring salmon canneries in Alaska—and tasting everything she could find in between. It also meant that between 1948 and 1960, she traveled more than 800,000 miles in the pursuit of food—more than three times the distance from the earth to the moon. The marathon paid off: Paddleford's weekly readership topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953, Time magazine named her America's "best-known food editor." At the height of her career, Paddleford made a salary of $250,000—at the time an almost unheard of sum, especially for a woman. In 1960, Paddleford published How America Eats, a collection of 12 years of columns that became a seminal work. Many have regarded Paddleford as America's first food journalist.

FOOD STUDIES | http://www.newschool.edu/foodstudies

This panel revisits Paddleford's contributions and discusses her legacy. Panelists include Kelly Alexander, former senior editor at Saveur and North Carolina-based author of the critically acclaimed biography Hometown Appetites: The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled How America Ate (Gotham 2008); freelance journalist and author Betsy Wade, whose newspaper career began at the Herald Tribune, where she worked in Women's News with Clementine Paddleford; former restaurant columnist at Gourmet magazine, Colman Andrews, who was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Saveur; and Molly O'Neill, journalist and author of three award-winning cookbooks, a memoir, Mostly True, and editor the Library of America's anthology American Food Writing. Moderated by Andrew F. Smith, faculty at The New School's Food Studies Program and author of Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine.

Sponsored by the Food Studies Program at The New School
FOOD STUDIES | http://www.newschool.edu/foodstudies

*Location: Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th Street.
06/23/2010 6:00 p.m.

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