WomenSports magazine

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womenSports magazine was founded in 1974 by Billie Jean King, Larry King and Jim Jorgensen. It was launched with Billie Jean’s huge media impact after beating Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match in 1973. Billie Jean and Larry King acted as publishers, while Jim Jorgensen was the company president.

womenSports magazine was the first magazine dedicated to women in sports. The magazine was launched as a 16 page insert in Glamour magazine with a victorious posed Billie Jean King on the cover.

During its design and launch phase, womenSports received help from Ms. Magazine publishers Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem as well as celebrity PR executive Pat Kingsley

The magazine’s first editor was Rosalie Write who came from Philadelphia magazine.^[1] She was fired in 1975 and replaced by Cheryl McCall from the Detroit Free Press newspaper. Ms Wright went on to become the editor-in-chief of Sunset (magazine).

After two years of independence, womenSports was sold to Redbook’s publisher in 1976 and the company’s offices were moved to New York from San Francisco. Then editor, Cheryl McCall, stayed with the magazine, but soon left to become an editor of [[People {magazine)|]] magazine. Cutler Durkee moved with Cheryl from San Francisco to New York and then from womenSports to People where he became its Executive Editor.

womenSports won a Penney Missouri Excellence Award in 1974.^[2]

Shortly after launch womenSports reached a monthly circulation of 200,000.

While headquartered in California, womenSports enjoyed access to a variety of west coast talent. Writers Anne Lamott , John Carroll and Greg Hoffman on staff there, as well as Sally Ride (America's first female astronaut).

The Women's Sports Foundation was launched in close conjunction with womenSports and each issue of the magazine contained a two page article written by the executive director of the Foundation.

[edit] References

Rosalie Wright

  I am Rosalie Muller Wright Pakenham.  I was the founding editor of Womensports.  To correct a few items in your listing:  It never was a 16-page insert in Glamour Magazine. I started in December of 1973, hiring Jon(not John) Carroll, Anne Lamott (age 19)and other writers who went on to great things. We produced our first issue of 96 pages, dated May, 1974. Yes, Billie Jean was on the cover.
  I was fired in May, l975 because I would not print a story written by an advertiser, Clairol, telling women how to use their products to keep their hair from turning brassy from sun exposure.  I had been Managing Editor of Philadelphia Magazine before Billie Jean and Larry King hired me to start Womensports, and publishing stories written by advertisers was not in my editorial tradition.  (Philadelphia Magazine won the National Magazine Award four times while I was employed there--Oct. 1969-Dec. 1973 with child hiatus of two years).
  Nearly everyone on the Womensports staff quit when I was fired, but in my subsequent jobs (Executive Editor, New West Magazine, Assistant Managing Editor, San Francisco Chronicle, Editor in Chief, Sunset Magazine) I hired them back and have been great friends ever since.RPakenham 16:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
   Rosalie Muller Wright Pakenham13:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)71.58.187.79