EOTO#2 journalism Heros

 

EOTO#2 journalism Heros 

 At the end of the nineteenth century, a wave of women rethought what journalism could say, sound like, and do. “Sensational : The Hidden History of America’s ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’” Kim Todd evokes a league of women casting their lessons of truth.  In the second half of the nineteenth century, Todd argues that a new wave of journalists emerged. 

Kim Todd’s “Sensational : The Hidden History of America’s ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’” unfolds the years following the Civil War as a defining era of experimenting with what a newspaper, a nation, or even a woman might be. 

She was one of the nation's “girl stunt reporters “ who pioneered a new genre of investigative journalism, going undercover to reveal societal ills. Her name was Nellie Bly.

Nellie bly was born 1864, in Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania. Her father was an influential judge, and he also was a role model for will and determination. Nellie Bly learned the art of standing out from the crowd from her mother. When Nellie was six years old, her father died unexpectedly. Her mother then remarried, however her new husband was abusive and incapable of supporting the family. The marriage ended six years later.

At age fourteen, Nellie was called upon to testify at her mother’s divorce trial. During the miserable years of her mother’s second marriage, Nellie then realized that she was not going to depend on herself. At age sixteen, Nellie and her family moved to Pittsburgh. Her brothers quickly found white collar jobs. However, jobs that were available to girls and women were in factories and  sweatshops.Teaching was one of the few professions  that were opened to women and becoming a teacher would allow her to make her way into the world. After only one semester the money ran out.

Throughout the 1880’s and 90’s women from Colorado to Missouri to Massechustes dressed in shabby clothes, sneaked into textile mills to report on factory conditions, and slipped behind the scenes at adoption agencies that were corrupt.  

At the time, a revolution in printing technology made putting paper out cheaper than ever, before a flood of immigrants offered a mesmerizing new audience. Newspaper rooms from San Francisco’s  the examiner, to New York’s  world, battled viciously for market share with weapons of scandal and innovation. However, advances in printing technology made mass publishing more affordable as inmigrantes were pouring into the United States “offered new audiences” for letters, and industrialization, a rich source of narrative drama, was creating both wealth and misery.

When Nellie Bly’s 1887 “Inside the Madhouse” series for the World hit the streets of New York, readers couldn’t get enough. She had faked insanity to get committed to the asylum at Blackwell’s Island so she could document the starvation and abuse of patients. However, writing by women has historically been devalued and the nineteenth century was no exception. 

Stunt reporters challenged the views of what women should be. Even Though they could not cast a ballot, women reporters could interview presidential candidates. They could not sit in juries, but the world could enrolled 12 female reporters and editors to offer their perspective on certain court cases.