Washington’s Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists

Real news traveled fast, even in the days before internet connections. During the New Deal and World War II, Washington elites turned to Hope Ridings Miller’s column in the Washington Post to see what was really going on in town. Cocktail parties, embassy receptions and formal dinners were her beat as society editor. “I went as a guest,” said Miller, “and hoped that they’d forget I was a reporter.”In Washington’s Golden Age, Joseph Dalton chronicles the life of this pioneering woman journalist who covered the powerful vortex of politics, diplomacy, and society during a career that stretched from FDR to LBJ. After joining the Post staff, she was the only woman on the city desk. Later she had a nationally syndicated column. For ten years she edited Diplomat Magazine and then wrote three books about Washington life. Once a girl from a small town in Texas, Miller created a web of connections at the highest levels. In Washington’s Golden Age, Dalton escorts readers inside the Capital’s regal mansions, the hushed halls of Congress, and the Post’s smoky and manly newsroom to rediscover an earlier era of gentility and discretion now relegated to the distant past.

Reviews of Washington’s Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists

"The best women reporters in Washington have always found unique ways to get their stories. This was especially true of society editor Hope Ridings Miller. Read about the rise of women in Journalism in this biography of a trailblazer." — April Ryan, White House Correspondent-American Urban Radio Networks; CNN Analyst; author "At a time when people turned to newspaper society pages to find out what was really going on in the nation's capital, Hope Ridings Miller was there to tell them. In this meticulously researched book, Joseph Dalton traces his cousin's remarkable career as society editor for The Washington Post and observer of the power elite. Eleanor Roosevelt, Sam Rayburn, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Mary Pickford, Walt Disney, Jacqueline Kennedy, Pat Nixon and even the Hope diamond all make appearances in Washington's Golden Age, but the real star is Miller, who not only documented a rarified world of high society and politics but lived it. Beyond the glittering social scenes, Dalton offers a glimpse of a time when women were just beginning to make their way in the newspaper business, when reporters and the people they covered were often allies, and when the rules of the game called for civility and manners – and sometimes even white gloves. The result is a book that will be appreciated by anyone who loves history, journalism or simply a good story." — Kristin Gilger, Senior Associate Dean, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University