Ruth Whitney; Innovative Editor of Glamour Magazine

Ruth Whitney, who as editor of Glamour magazine for three decades helped young American women cope with feminism and coming of age, has died. She was 71.

Whitney died Friday at her home in Irvington, N.Y., of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease.

She headed the Conde Nast magazine for women ages 18 to 35 from 1967 until September, collecting four National Magazine Awards and increasing circulation by 54% to 2.3 million. Whitney maintained the magazine’s history of offering features on fashion and beauty, but also boldly ventured into the once taboo subjects of date rape, infertility and abortion. Under her guidance, Glamour became the first mainstream American women’s magazine to feature an African American woman on its cover.

“It is a special thrill for a magazine named Glamour to win in a category called public interest for a topic as seethingly controversial as abortion,” Whitney said with typical class in her one-sentence acceptance speech of the 1992 National Magazine Award.

When Whitney stepped down last fall, Good Housekeeping editor-in-chief Ellen Levine told People magazine: “Ruth set a standard for women’s journalism by which we all should be measuring ourselves. She’s so good, she’s off the charts.”

Born Ruth Reinke in Oshkosh, Wis., the innovative future editor was the daughter of a gravestone and mausoleum designer. She won a scholarship to Northwestern University, where she married journalism student Daniel Whitney.

She dropped out of school and got a job as a promotional copywriter for Time, but was fired after, she often said, she proved fonder than the magazine of presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. Also shut out of work at Newsweek, Fortune and other news magazines because in her words she “had a uterus,” Whitney pursued her career in women’s magazines.

She began as copy chief at the now defunct Better Living in 1954 and only two years later, at age 27, was its editor in chief. She later spent a decade as a top-echelon editor at Seventeen magazine.

At Glamour, Whitney often described what she saw as her “mission,” commenting: “I wanted to broaden the scope of a magazine to go with women’s lives. I never wanted to appeal to everyone. That’s not what we were about, and that’s not the secret of our success. But I really wanted to make women feel good about themselves, not just about what they wore.”

Widowed in 1995, Whitney is survived by her son, Philip, of New York, and a brother, Leonard Reinke, of Oshkosh, Wis.