Megan Trotter | news editor

For decades, Professor Maggie Jones Patterson has been a staple in the Duquesne Media Department, but now 42 years later she has decided it is time to start thinking about something else.

“I’m gonna keep my hand in things, but not teaching a full-time schedule,” Patterson said. “I’m tired of the load of teaching.”

Patterson, a Pittsburgh local, started at Duquesne in 1982 and has taught a variety of journalism and gender studies courses, such as media ethics, in addition to having her hand in almost every aspect of Duquesne’s journalism department.

Michela Hall, a former student at Duquesne and now a media department adjunct professor for the past three years, has known Patterson since undergrad. Patterson has served as a close mentor to Hall, with their offices being located next to one another. The relationship has developed from student/teacher to colleagues to friends, Hall said.

“She always has this quiet confidence of knowing what she’s talking about,” Hall said. “It really is, for lack of a better term, a blessing to have her in our department. And it’s going to be really tough not to just be able to … knock on the wall and be like, ‘I need to talk to you.’”

During her time at Duquesne, Patterson has held chair positions for the Duquesne University Student Publications Board as well as been a board member of PublicSource, an online nonprofit news service for the Pittsburgh area, the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Duquesne and the Pittsburgh Society of Professional Journalists chapter, according to Duquesne’s website.

Bobby Kerlik, a Duquesne 2003 graduate and later advisor to The Duke said she was “always a great defender of student journalism.” Patterson would also make sure a story was fair and accurate and stand up for student reporters, he said.

Associate Professor Zeynep Tanes Ehle has known Patterson since she interviewed for a teaching position at Duquesne 13 years ago and has worked with her on a variety of committees. She said the first thing she noticed about Patterson was her knowledge.

“She has this kind of calm and laid-back demeanor on everything, and that was very helpful in kind of keeping the peace,” Tanes Ehle said. “One of the things that I think stands out is how much in every decision … she always looked out for the best interests of students first. So that was her, always her primary concern.”

“We will feel her absence.”

Multiplatform journalism and political science major Riley Hunter took Patterson’s Sex Myth and Media class last year and was struck by how understanding she was.

“I got COVID the very first week of class,” Hunter said. “‘[Patterson said] ‘Don’t even open Canvas until you’re fine and get better.’”

Patterson paving the way

 Patterson received a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University and an MFA from University of Pittsburgh, before entering the workforce at a time when women were not as respected in the newsroom.

“I majored in the journalism department, but in the advertising track. One of our neighbors and family friends was a woman who worked for a big ad agency here in town, and she was the only career woman I knew who wasn’t a teacher or a nurse, who did something different. And I thought her job seemed very romantic,” Patterson said.

Once she graduated, Patterson interviewed for an advertising position but realized that wasn’t what she wanted to do. That’s when she got an offer from the Pittsburgh Press to work at the city desk.

“I reported for work, and the managing editor called me into his office and he said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Maggie, we made a mistake. We sent you the wrong letter. We don’t have women on the city desk,’” Patterson said.

The reason for this — the newspapers thought it was too dangerous to have women working at night. Instead, newspapers assumed women were only interested in “women topics” such as weddings and engagements, Patterson said.

“I said, ‘Oh, Leo, I’ve been here last summer, sometimes when I had covered something at night, and there were a lot of women here, they’re cleaning the offices.’ He got red in the face, like ‘you little smart alec,’” she said. “It really was just, if you can believe it, an innocent observation. I wasn’t trying to throw it in his face.”

Despite not having been hired to cover the city desk, Patterson still found ways to cover topics she was interested in. While on assignment to interview Betty Friedan, the former National President of the National Organization for Women and author of “The Feminine Mystique,” Patterson was invited by Friedan to join them in “storming” a restaurant that was exclusively for men.

On a tight deadline, she dictated the article over to an editor in the rewrite department over a payphone. This was her first solo byline.

Patterson worked for Pittsburgh Press for five years, before deciding she wanted to pursue more in-depth reporting, so she freelanced for a while before taking an editor position at the University of Pittsburgh.

“I was a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said about her time at Pittsburgh Press. “I was not a very experienced person, and so I had to rely on other people. It was kind of a perfect slot for not being respected. I’m not sure I deserved respect except [I was] somebody that they thought had potential.”

The greatest accomplishment

Patterson has co-authored four books, but “Murder in our Midst: Comparing the Ethics of Crime Coverage in an Age of Globalized News,” published by the Oxford University Press in 2021, is her favorite.

The book takes a look at the different ethics of journalism practices of 10 countries across the world. Patterson and her co-author Romayne Smith Fullerton would travel during the summer collecting research and conducting interviews for the book.

“I think it’s maybe one of the more insightful things I’ve done,” Patterson said. “We worked on it for nine years. We would go to a couple countries, and we would look at their press.”

What’s next?

While Patterson will no longer be teaching at Duquesne, she said she plans to stay involved with media department committees, as well as continue to attend “Wednesday lunches” with the other women in the Media Department.

She also plans on spending more time with her granddaughter and continuing to work on articles.

Patterson has won numerous awards for her reporting. Most recently, the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania selected her for the Service to Journalism Award. Patterson will receive her award at the Golden Quill Awards banquet on May 28.

“I think we [women] tend to shrink back when we need to be a little more assertive,” Patterson said. “I think the young women I teach today do have – on the whole – more confidence than I did, and so I would say, have faith in yourself. That’s what my advice would be.”

Megan Trotter can be reached at
trotterm@duq.edu.