Born in 1923, at a time when women reporters were relatively few and far between, Joan Wagner thought of journalism as “a calling.” In high school, she attended a Northwestern journalism summer program, and subsequently earned both her bachelor’s and her master’s degrees from Medill. There, she served as managing editor of the Daily Northwestern, overseeing its coverage of campus events and of local Evanston happenings. In 1950, after stints as a radio script writer and as a copywriter, she joined the Chicago Tribune, where she would work until her death in 1998. (1)
According to her Tribune colleagues, Beck quickly became “a backbone of support” for the newspaper’s few female writers. (2) She also addressed her early reported pieces, as well as her later op-eds, to a largely female audience. Regular features “What Makes Our Teens Tick” and “You and Your Child” and a weekly Q-and-A column about parents and children made her a well-known name not only in Chicago but all around the country. She not only relied on her own experience raising two children, but also developed a particular expertise absorbing and translating the latest scientific and medical research into terms that her avid (and often anxious) readers could easily understand. (3)
As her Tribune readership grew, Beck also began to write for an even wider audience. Her first book, How to Raise a Brighter Child: The Case for Early Learning, was published in 1967 (and can still be found on Simon & Schuster’s website today). Is My Baby All Right?: A Guide to Birth Defects, co-written with Dr. Virginia Apgar, namesake and creator of the Apgar score, came next in 1973. These were followed by Effective Parenting (1976) and Best Beginnings: Give Your Child a Head Start in Life (1983). Beck was the first woman to have her own regular Tribune column, and the first woman to sit on the paper’s editorial board. (4)
Beck never lived in Evanston after graduating from Northwestern, but she also never left Evanston entirely behind. In fact, she came back again and again: to judge a high school essay contest and teach students about working in print media, to address the Woman’s Club of Evanston and the North Shore chapter of Women in Communications, to give guidance to church groups and preschoolers’ parents. (5) For decades, she also stayed friends with Ruth Moss Buck, whom she’d met at that very first Northwestern summer program, and who also wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and who lived in Evanston for 50 years. After Ruth died in 2006, the Northwestern Joan Beck Journalism Scholarship Fund was renamed for both women, and it still supports aspiring young journalists today. (6)
by Serena Covkin, PhD, for the Evanston Women’s History Project
(1) “Joan Beck, 75, Pioneering Journalist,” Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1998, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.chicagotribune.com/1998/12/12/joan-beck-75-pioneering-journalist/; “Joan Beck, 1923-1998,” Archival and Manuscript Collections, Northwestern University Libraries, accessed March 10, 2025, https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/agents/people/3125.
(2) “Joan Beck, 75, Pioneering Journalist,” Chicago Tribune.
(3) “Joan Beck, 75, Pioneering Journalist,” Chicago Tribune.
(4) “Joan Beck, 75, Pioneering Journalist,” Chicago Tribune; “Joan Wagner Beck,” Hall of Achievement, Northwestern Medill, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/about-us/awards/hall-of-achievement/joan-wagner-beck.html.
(5) “Richter to Show Holy Land Movie at Woman’s Club,” Evanston Review, February 9, 1956, 36; “Win United Charities Essay Prizes,” Evanston Review, May 28, 1959, 33; “…Conference to Feature Talks on 35 Types of Careers,” Evanston Review, February 11, 1960, 11; “Columnist Joan Beck to Talk To Methodist Mothers’ Circle,” Evanston Review, September 19, 1968, 61; “Mothers Circle to hear author,” Evanston Review, April 30, 1970, 61; “Woman’s Auxiliary: Joan Beck here,” Evanston Review, March 1, 1973, 22; “Women in Communications: Talk by Joan Beck,” Evanston Review, May 15, 1980, 101; “Women in Management slate dinner, speaker,” Evanston Review, September 10, 1987, 28.
(6) “Ruth Buck,” Evanston Review, December 7, 2006, 161; “Joan Beck, 1923-1998,” Archival and Manuscript Collections, Northwestern University Libraries.