Editorial

Women have helped shape journalism

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In observance of Women’s History Month, we thought it would be fitting to highlight some notable women who were instrumental in shaping the world of communication, especially in the newspaper industry.

Up until the second half of the 20th century, most female journalists were restricted to writing about social events and the latest in food or fashion, but there were a few intrepid women who took on subjects that were usually considered the domain of their male “colleagues.” One of the first and most well known was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, a.k.a. Nellie Bly, who worked for the New York World in the late 1800s. Bly’s career began when, at 18, she responded to an editorial in the Pittsburgh Dispatch that strongly suggested that women should stay home to cook and clean, and even termed the working woman a “monstrosity.” Bly’s crafty yet scathing response attracted the attention of the paper’s managing editor, who offered her a job.

Working as a reporter for $5 a week, Cochran adopted her nom de plume and was the first practitioner of what became known as “stunt journalism.” In 1887, she went undercover for 10 days at an asylum on Blackwell’s Island — now Roosevelt Island — where she posed as a mental patient. Her exposé on the terrible conditions there led to an investigation of the facility, and some changes at what was then New York City’s Department of Public Charities and Corrections.

In 1890, the World sent Bly on a record-setting 72-day trip around the world, inspired by the 80-day record of Jules Verne’s fictitious Phineas Fogg. She wrote books about both of those experiences, and gained renown for those and other stories detailing the improper treatment of prisoners in New York jails and workers in the city’s factories, and corruption in the State Legislature and elsewhere.

Women journalists didn’t always have to prove themselves by elbowing in on subjects traditionally covered by men. In the mid-1800s, years before Bly came along, Margaret Fuller became the first full-time book reviewer and the first female foreign correspondent. Her book “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” was lauded as the first major feminist writing in the U.S.

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