In 1914 George Fort Milton needed a women writer of Miles' skill and stature. Milton, former editor of the News who had purchased the paper in 1908, had transformed the unassuming evening paper into a powerful voice for Southern progressivism, that wave of indigenous political and social reforms that took place in the South during the first decades of the twentieth century (Grantham xv). Under his leadership, the News championed a range of issues including national prohibition, racial tolerance, child labor reform, improvement of public education, agricultural modernization and women's suffrage. Yet despite the sweeping nature of the proposed reforms--which amounted to the virtual reconstitution of southern society--Milton's progressivism was tempered by a deep and abiding paternalism. He was typical of the southern progressives described by Dewey Grantham: "Optimistic about future prospects but alarmed by the tensions and turmoil that pervaded the South in the late nineteenth century, [they] looked toward the creation of a clearly defined community that would accommodate a society differentiated by race and class but one that also possessed unity, cohesion, and stability" (xvii). In order to foster this more cohesive society--without radically altering its foundations--Milton was determined to give a public voice to those segments of it which had been traditionally been denied one. Thus he introduced columns such as News For Colored People, written by African-American journalist T. W. Tobias, and amplified the society page into a full-fledged forum on women's issues.

    The new society page, which bore the headline "Looked at from Feminine Viewpoint," had been announced on January 1, 1914:     

In this day of women's activities in various lines we believe those who see things from the feminine viewpoint are entitled to their own organ in which their ideas may be expressed. This department will be conducted by women for women.Wide latitude will be given the woman editor in the expression of opinions. Correspondence is solicited. Let every woman who has some message to her fellow- women feel free to express herself, keeping in view our space limitations. We trust this page will become the forum on which thinking women will discuss the questions that concern them most.   (6)

Miles, who shared Milton's progressivism if not his paternalism, responded eagerly to the call. Several months before she took a job with the paper, she contributed an article on the women's suffrage movement in England titled "Defense Found For Militancy: Mrs. Emma Bell Miles Cites Historian MacCaulay" (1/26/14:6) and most likely wrote the editorial "To Suit the Modiste" (1/27/14:6). She had also gotten to know Kate Vaughn, the society page editor, who sent her out on occasional reporting assignments. Miles seems the probable author of "Pre-eminent in Nation's History" (1/19/14:6), a review of a progressivist lecture on Southern History.

    When Miles joined the paper in April, she worked under Vaughn in conjunction with Margaret Kerr, whom Miles called in her diary "the real society editor" (1), and a "Miss Worley," who also served as Milton's secretary. She took an apartment in the Frances Willard Home for Working Girls, located on 424 Georgia Avenue, which overlooked the Hamilton County Courthouse and the Fountain Square Park (the setting of her "conversations"). At thirty-five years of age, she was easily the oldest "girl" in the Home, but quickly adapted to her new surroundings. Having left her husband and children on Walden's Ridge, she savored the opportunity for uninterrupted writing. In her diary entry of May 25, 1914, she declares:

[N]ow I behold new and wider fields of beauty opening before me, in larger relationships and limitless hunting-grounds. My position on the News enables me to come in touch with large and vital issues. I do not care to read the average newspaper, but have felt for years that I should enjoy working on one. This position is one which seems to others underpaid and insignificant; but it allows me to express myself, and with some hours extra outside work which I do as I can, the pay of $9 a week permits us to live. So it looks like a heaven-sent opportunity to me . . . .   The News is a small paper, quite eclipsed by its contemporary the Times, but it has the essential quality of being  sincere.(1)

This is a revealing admission for Miles, who seems to have little interest in "news" in the conventional sense, even disdaining the daily reportage which makes up the body of the "average newspaper." As George Fort Milton no doubt expected of her, she is more interested in the "large and vital issues" to be addressed in the new society page. Writing for the News is more than just a job to her--it is a chance to join the progressivist debate, to take an active role in determining the type of society the South will become in the twentieth century.

    Given her sense of mission, Miles gravitated naturally toward editorial-writing, shaping her strong but sinewy arguments into long periodic sentences. By contrast, her news articles lack the factuality and directness of good reports. No doubt her previous experience as a fiction and creative nonfiction writer had not fully prepared her for the task of newswriting. For instance, in The Spirit of the Mountains, she had fictionalized informants both to protect their identities and to give herself dramatic license in presenting their hardscrabble lives. Such practice was clearly out of place in a news article. Fortunately for Miles, Milton and Kate Vaughn allowed her to choose her assignments. Of the all works that can be definitely attributed to her during her full-time employment between April 1, 1914, and June 30, 1914, only a dozen or so are news articles. The overwhelming number are editorials--plus occasional poems and, of course, her original column the Fountain Square Conversations.

    Miles clearly identified with her more creative and polemical work. In a diary entry of May 27, 1914, she records the unsigned editorials which she has written, adding as an afterthought, "I turned in some news but most of it got left out" (3). Compare her reaction, only two days later, when her editorials were left out: "I felt as vexed as I can permit myself to be over a small matter, over having my eds. [editorials] cut out yesterday; but they were not destroyed, it seems, merely held over" (Diary 4). Miles seems the quintessential solo artist rather than a team-player. During the misunderstanding over her editorials, she kept a diligent record of the ones she had written. By June, her output of news articles dropped to almost nothing. On a weekend visit to her children on Walden's Ridge, she mentions in her diary: "I wrote only my editorials" (5). While there may be a touch of defensiveness, there seems a greater realization that she would never have as much interest in "news" as in the "purer" writing of her columns and editorials.