One of the Daily Mirror’s themes is to highlight women’s history – not an easy task because women’s achievements were often poorly documented, and women who attained any sort of prominence were presented as curiosities. Like the Samuel Johnson quip on a dog walking on its hind legs.

Here, The Times presents as an oddity, Margaret Dixon, the only woman attending an Associated Press convention in Los Angeles of newspaper managing editors.  (See also Aggie Underwood, Mary Holland Kinkaid and Laura Vitray. And Marion Brunot Haymaker, who in 1909 speculated about the first woman managing editor.)

How many U.S. daily newspapers have women managing editors today? And I mean managing editor for news and not something like “managing editor for creative awesomeness, clickability maximizationism, video virability and mayor of Twittertown.”

Dixon started in journalism after graduating from Louisiana State in 1928. She later served as reporter and women’s editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Dixon became city editor of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate in 1939 and managing editor in 1942. While managing editor, also Dixon covered politics. She was a delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and received awards from the journalism sorority Theta Sigma Phi and the National Federation of Press Women. She was the first Louisiana woman to be invited to join Sigma Delta Chi.

Dixon died of cancer in 1970 at the age of 62.