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To answer the questions of whether the pioneer effort and subsequent differences in lifestyles affected sex-role stereotyping in newspapers in 1885 and whether a widely perceived difference in role expectation was evident in the popular writing of the times, a study examined the differences in sex roles reflected in popular journalistic portrayals of two distinct modes of living. These two modes were the settled, stylized city life of the East and the turbulent, sometimes dangerous, and frequently arduous life of the western pioneers. The year 1885 was chosen because it marked a pivotal period in the social perception of women in both the East and West. The "New York Times" and the "San Francisco Chronicle" were chosen because they were typical of the era, readily available, and are still in publication. A total of 180 stories were randomly selected and sampled pertaining to women or men 18 years of age or older. Findings revealed that (1) numerical analysis of individual signifiers indicate that the pioneer experience did serve to broaden societal perceptions and awareness of women as functioning entities; and (2) greater environmental stresses of western migration, which necessitated a broader distribution of survival activities between the sexes, influenced journalists to write about women in more serious and respectful tones even though topics of discourse remained essentially the same. (Seven notes and five tables of data are included, and 85 references are appended.) (MS)

Conflicting information has made it necessary to examine the key factors involved in submitting magazine nonfiction for publication in order to provide better insight into the mechanics of magazine acceptance. A preliminary study tested the applicability of the market systems approach from the perspective of the magazine editor. Subjects, 28 editors of major United States magazines, were interviewed and their remarks were coded by content analysis. Thirty trade books on freelance writing were also examined. Findings suggest that (1) existing information on magazine freelancing is unreliable; (2) magazine freelancing is best viewed as a business enterprise; and (3) an appropriate and complete approach to investigations of freelancing is one derived from business research, the market systems approach. (Seven tables of data are included, and 38 references are appended.) (MS)

The communications of suffragist Lucy Stone illustrate the changes that the growth of women's magazines brought to nineteenth century feminists. As indicated in letters to friends and family, Lucy Stone became an active proponent of women's rights at a time when public speaking tours were the best means of reaching a wide audience. As the printing industry grew, she adopted the magazine as a way of communicating her ideals. One of several magazines for women that conformed to traditional sex roles, Stone's "The Woman's Journal," which appeared in 1870, was aimed at an audience of well-educated club women, professionals, and writers as yet uncommitted to the cause of women's suffrage. Contents included editorial matter on the political issues of the day as they related to women's issues. Stone's "personals" were aimed at (1) helping professional and intellectual women to know what their contemporaries were doing, (2) highlighting the most praiseworthy activities of such women, and (3) giving the "Journal" a touch of "high-society" polish and thus adding legitimacy to women's activities outside their prescribed roles in the home. The adjectives, nouns and titles that describe women in the "Journal" frequently resembled the patronizing language used in the newspapers of the time. This dichotomy has been explained by historians as a deliberate effort by the women's rights groups to "tone down" their message, to engender in the general public a belief that ordinary feminine women might actually want women's rights. The coincidence of prosuffrage publications with the grassroots populist movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that targeted publications carrying what is essentially an advertisement for a cause are a better means of communicating an ideology than is attempting to communicate that ideology individually. (HTH)

About 350,000 freelance magazine articles were purchased by magazine editors last year from the 22,000 freelancers and 225,000 would-be freelancers in the United States. A study examined the factors editors judge most important in selecting freelance magazine article proposals, using factor analysis and qualitative examination of persuasive elements. Ten sample query letters, written by several professional writers with freelancing experience, were provided to 5 editors, 25 regular contributors, and 100 novice writers (5 editors, 18 regular contributors, and 21 novice writers responded). Letters were rated on writer experience, skill displayed, research, article idea, appropriateness to the market, and overall quality. Results showed that (1) editors' judgments of article proposal quality were chiefly influenced by the article idea being offered (47.4%) and writer's skill (31%); (2) both regular contributors and rejected query writers place article attributes first, market appropriateness second, and skill displayed third; and (3) persuasion factors considered most important by editors were cognitive complexity similar to the editor's publication; concrete, vivid, readable, varied, and logical language use; and human interest. Findings suggest that novices who offer a well-written, human-focused article are as likely to achieve acceptance as long-time professional writers. (An appendix of analysis of the 10 query letters and the letters and 31 references are attached.) (MS)