Todays lecture is about american women journalists of the late 19th century. This is one of my absolute favorite things to talk about as i am sure you all can imagine. I am just going to dive right into it. The title of todays top is stunned reporters and sob sisters. That is because these labels represent a new kind of job that emerged for women at the end of the 19th century. I want to tell you the story of how some pretty bold and remarkable women seized the opportunities created by the circumstances of their time to carve out a public space for themselves and to make a voice for themselves and four others won womens voices were not welcomed or respected that much. History is always the story of individuals are responding creatively to the conditions and circumstances in which they live. To really understand how this unfolded and how this new type of job, that being a newspaper reporter in some of the bigger cities in the country to understand how this came about, we really need to back up and talk about the business of journalism in the 1800s, specifically a new Business Model that emerged in the 1830s. That was the penny press. This was a new type of newspaper. It began in new york city. Any ideas why it would have been called the penny press . It was cheaper . It was cheaper. Absolutely. It was sold for one penny. This was a new idea in journalism. Until then, newspapers had been sold mainly by subscription. They cater to the Business Class and political elites. They were far more expensive. They cost about 400 a year for a subscription, which was a lot of money back then. The idea for a cheap newspaper actually did not come from a journalist at all. It came from a medical student named horatio shepard. He noticed as he walked to medical school in new york city how many vendors were on the streets. People were willing to buy anything for a penny. They were willing to give a penny pretty easily. The idea was, why not sell a newspaper for a penny . Why not fill it with content that would be of interest that particular day that would be entertaining, that would give people a reason to buy it. He tried, this medical student, with the help of our friend horse greely. You remember him. Hes from the new york tribune. It failed. It didnt work out for him. Other people took up the challenge and made a go of it. These newspapers, these penny papers, had some characteristics which made them different. For one thing, they catered to the masses. The idea was to sell at a high volume, to sell a high volume of newspapers at a low price as opposed to selling just a few newspapers at a really high price. In order to appeal to as many readers as possible, they wrote in a more conversational way. They wrote stories about the city in which people were living. They wrote stories about crime. They wrote every day kind of news, right . They were catering to the mass over the class, so to speak. What else . They were competitive. As more and more of these newspapers cropped up, they began competing with each other for the most up to the minute information. They wrote tall tales sometimes, scandalous types of things. The biggest difference was that now because their purpose was to attract lots of eyeballs, they could charge more for advertising. This is a shift in the Business Model of journalism. It is probably still recognizable to you today, right . The idea is to sell the content pretty cheaply to attract a high circulation or lots of readers, and then to charge advertisers for the opportunity to reach those readers. The first of these newspapers was started by benjamin day in 1833. It was the new york sun. You can see there that it even says price, one cent. The motto of the new york sun was it shines for all. Why that motto . Well, it was aimed again at regular people, not just the leaders. This was possible for a lot of Different Reasons from the period, right . For one thing, urban populations were growing. The economy was growing. You had a middle class that was growing, so more people were able to buy newspapers, but also advertisers were more interested in reaching those people. Literacy rates were growing. Democratic reforms were expanding. Voting privileges forgiving average americans a feeling of more enfranchisement, a greater interest in the affairs of their communities. Steam power, of course, was making it possible to print many more copies of the newspapers. Again, if you print a lot of newspapers, you have to sell a lot of newspapers. What do you think happened . How do you sell newspapers . How do you get attention . How do you attract attention . What do you think they did . Any thoughts . Go out on the street and sell papers . You get out on the street, yeah. You know, maybe you sensationalize of it, right . That is what the new york sun was known for. One of its most successful sort of series of stories was called the great moon hoax. This was a series of stories in 1835 in which the new york sun reported that life had been discovered on the moon. They reported on an article that had been reported in a scottish journal allegedly reporting this discovery. Theyre allegedly was plant life on the moon and fauna, even some wing to battle a creatures which resembled the flying monkeys in wizard of oz much later. In 1835, that is what they said lived on the moon. Of course it was a humbug. Of course it was made up. The new york sun never admitted it. Not only that, it circulation rose to rival that of the times of london, which was by then the most read newspaper in the whole world. This put the new york sun on the map. It was fun. It was entertaining. They reported on courts and Police Reports and crime. This had not been done before. Another type, another newspaper that was found out about this time it was the new york herald, founded by james gordon then in 1835. His was a little different. His mission was to provide a correct picture of the world. His mission was to give people information about their city and to be independent of politics, of religion, of the elite at that time. He shocked readers with this, by the way. He came out and said, you know, we dont practice any particular religion. We are not protestants. We are not catholics. He called things what they were. He used really frank language. He used the word legs in his newspaper instead of limbs. Scandalous, right . He used words like pantaloons. He actually called things what they were. To che dared the folks in powe, the upper class, to challenge him. He was extremely innovative. A lot of what we recognize in journalism today was a result of minutes innovation. He came up with the idea of personal ads to create more revenue for his newspapers. He established the beet system of reporting, right . You still go into news rooms and people will tell you what particular beat they are covering, meaning that someone is assigned to cover court. Someone is assigned to cover crime. Someone is assigned to cover politics. That was the innovation of bennett. He established the First Washington press court in washington, d. C. Previous to that, lawmakers, when they had hearings and debates in good time, they would provide those to the washington papers to publish. Then it was the first one who said, you know, you should be covering this in realtime. He created a press court to do that. He changed the definition of news. So, why is this important . Why am i starting with the penny press . It is because i want you to keep this in mind, right . As mark twain said, whatever it is that newspapers say, their objective is, it is actually to make money. That is their real motivation. Keep that in mind as we switch gears a bit. The other thing that you need to know about this time period to understand this rise of a new type of female journalist was you need to know about gender norms in the 19th century. What did people think about gender and what it meant to be a man versus a woman . There are two primary ideas here that are important. One is the notion of separate spheres for men and women. The ideology of this period was that mens work was public. It was important. It was four men. Women had other attributes, other qualities. They were natural caretakers. The two spheres should be kept separate, right . Men were assumed to be naturally more intelligent, active, in charge, right . Women were assumed to be better at raising the children and running the household. Obviously, at this time, women could not vote. Their Education Opportunities were far more limited than mens. They lacked Property Rights in many states. They were treated like property themselves. Part of this ideology came from religion. It was believed that god intended man to be the leaders and that god intended women to take care of their families physically, spiritually, intellectually. It was believed that women were, so to speak, the better sex. They were purer of mind and heart. They were needed to keep their man in line and to keep their families on a straight spiritual path. Another reason that this separation of spheres was so entrenched at this time with that the Industrial Revolution had changed. It was changing the patterns of peoples homes and peoples work. It was taking work, which, to that point, had been in the home. It was taking it out of the home, right . So, people were beginning to leave their homes to go to work for wages as opposed to producing all of their home goods and working the land and doing work as a family unit. You start to see this distinction between public, the public realm, which was that of work and politics and manned, and the private realm, which was the providence of women, the home, the domestic life of a particular family. So, separation of spheres, men and women are meant to be kept apart. Barbara walter, a historian famously wrote about the cult of true womanhood in the 18 hundreds. But she meant by this was to be a lady, a proper lady, at this time required for things of women. Piety, you had to be pious. Meaning you had to be religious. Right . Purity. They had to be pure of mind and body. Submissive needs, they had to be submissive to the men in their lives. Finally, domestic. They had to be well trained and able to manage the affairs of the household. So, women were put on a pedestal, so to speak. In terms of being the better sex, the protected class. However, they were often chain to that pedestal because the restricted their areas of influence. It restricted their opportunities, what they were able to do. Of course, it always depended on, their livelihoods depended on the ability of the man around them to properly care for them. To provide for them physically, materially, we know that that did not always happen. That is something that will come up a bit later. What is a girl to do in the situation . Right . What if you needed to work . What if you needed money . What if you had lost your mail provider right . How would you negotiate this situation . What if you wanted to work . Right, be a professional . What if you had things to say . What kinds of strategies could be used . There are two women who i think really illustrates the response to these types of conditions. If you look at them, they look really similar, right . Dont they lookalike. They look like they could be the same woman. They, in fact, were very different people. They did not like each other one of them was Sarah Josepha hale, the other one was Margaret Fuller. I want to talk about their experiences and influential really significant women journalists of their day. Again, it sets the stage for what is to come. Sarah josepha hale, the first female editor of a womens magazine. She was the editor of a magazine called go 80s ladies book. One of the most important magazines of its time. Achieve circulation that had not been seen before extremely important person in journalism she was a widow she was a widow and by her husband and had five children to feed she needed to work, right . She started to write. She had limited education. Mainly what she was able to get from her home. She wrote poetry, she wrote a really successful novel that enabled her to find some other opportunities. By the way, she eventually wrote mary had a little lamb. There you have it Sarah Josepha hale wrote mary had a little lamb. She was best known ass and influential editor. She was the embodiment of a lady for her time. She had impeccable taste in fashion, home decor, literature. She was as traditionally feminine as one could get. She was deeply religious. She used her editor ship of this magazine to tell other women how they could best live up to gods plan for them. How they could best care for their families and their children. She was a strong advocate for equal education for women. She helped found that sir which is a womans college. She believe that women should be physicians. However, she did not believe that women should vote. She believed in education for women because it would help them to take care of their families. It would help women carry out their god given duties. She was extremely influential for her time. Also, managed to remain a lady. She lobbied several president s to make thanksgiving a national holiday. He finally got lincoln to do it. It was partly, i guess, her doing that we celebrate thanksgiving as a national holiday. That is Sarah Josepha hale. Margaret fuller is a different story. Margaret fuller, remarkable, brilliant woman. Educated by her father. Encouraged her, gave her a classical education in greek, latin, in french, italian, history, philosophy. They lived in cambridge, massachusetts. Home to harvard where many of her male friends attended. She, however, was not able to attend. She had to rely on lessons that her male friends were able to bring home to her. Yet, she was highly intelligent. She was recognized as being highly intelligent. The family had, you know, strong intellectual circle around them. Except then her dad went broke and moved a family to a farm. She ended up having to take care of everybody again, loss of a male provider required her to become a teacher. That was one of the accepted jobs for women because it was part of caretaking and bringing up children eventually she got bored she moves back to the boston area. She moved back with the transcendentalist. Her friends include ralph wattle emmerson, the row, together this group founded the literary magazine called, the dial, they made her editor. I have a hunch they just wanted her to do all the work of editor. She did it and she was proud of it. It was a very well received, critically acclaimed, magazine. She is in the circle of friends. She is moving and shaking with some of the deepest thinkers of her time everyone knows that she is brilliant shes capable she has stuff to say. Nobody wanted to marry her because she was not perceived as being ladylike. She was not doing la sarah hale was doing. She was not fulfilling some kind of traditional image of what it meant to be a lady. This frustrated her, deeply. She wrote a book in 1845 called women in the 19th century, a feminist book she got the attention of horse greely, he keeps coming up. Horrific really of the norris tribune. He was impressed with her and hired her to be a literary critic. She is not in the newsroom she is writing from home she is a correspondent. Greenly gives her some opportunities that have not been open to women before. She becomes the first female Foreign Correspondent she responds from europe with letters and correspondents on goings on in all sorts of countries sarah hail thaw the Margaret Fuller was not a good role model this is le sara hale had to say about Margaret Fuller. What is the one true book . Thank, you the bible. She thought that fuller, according to hail was proof that the greater the intellectual force the greater and more fatally errors into which women fall who wander from the rock of salvation, christ the savior. Both women were influential, right . But fuller was, to be honest, she was treated as sort of a freak. She did not get to be [inaudible] a brilliant writer, a traditional woman. It just wasnt in the cards for her. In fact her story, shes in europe riding for horrific really she meets a guy ten years younger than her [inaudible] geo vani sounds pretty exciting to me they become lovers they have a baby out of wedlock got involved in the revolution, sailed off for america and around their ship wrecked off the coast of fire island and they drowned and their bodies were never found. [inaudible] it didnt work out for her. This is the model for women in journalism in the 18 hundreds which sets the stage for nellie bly, a name im sure you all have heard, right . When you talk about the history of women in journalism nellie bly always comes up. She has her own stamp she is very wellknown. The reason she is a wellknown it because she was extremely significant so, two pieces of context. Increasing commercialization of the press. Trying to drive up circulation get eyeballs. On the one hand women caution the sort of dilemma on the other hand traditional femininity, right . Verses, you know, and profession. A writing life. Not being able to negotiate it very well. How are the things going to come together . They come together in the form of nellie bly. Nellie bly was born elizabeth cochran, she was born in pennsylvania. Her father died, are you sensing a pattern . Her father died when she was young, just six years old. Her nickname was pink by the way, which i think is neat. Her father had been married before. Had had Something Like ten children. She was the result of a second marriage. Five children in that family. When he died he hadnt left any provisions for the second family. They were broke again, when she was a teenager she went off to school to become a teacher. If a woman was smart and wanted to work then that was often what she did. When she read a newspaper column in a local pittsburgh newspaper that called working women a monstrosity, her future changed. She wrote an angry letter to the editor of the newspaper because she knew from her own experience and that of many other women that it was necessary for women to work, a lot of the time. So what were they to do . She also knew from her mothers experience, her mother after the death of nellies dad her mother had married an abusive man that situation to not work out. Nellie bly i was really aware of some of the scary situations women can find themselves in. She wrote an angry letter to the editor. He was so impressed that he hired her to write for him and gave her the pen name, nellie bly. She was feisty she gave voice to people in issues that had not been given a hearing before. The paper can find her to the womens page. By this time newspapers had begun to publish as a way to draw in women readers. Remember, new Business Model advertising, eyeballs. Women are making a lot of the perch thing decisions for families. Advertisers want to reach women. Newspaper star womens pages and are now more interested in this type of content. That is where they try to keep her. Writing about fashion. They try to assign her stories about flowers and the stuff that wouldve made Sarah Josepha hale really happy. She wrote stories about divorce laws called for reforms of divorce laws. Largely from her mothers experience. She wrote about the conditions of women who worked in factories. She wrote about the medical treatment of the poor. She even convinced the pittsburgh paper to send her to mexico and it was there that she really started to get a taste of she came back and the newspaper tried to put her back on the womens page and she said, im bored. Im gonna go to new york. She left a note for the columnist who had called working women a monstrosity that just said, dear oh, that was his pen name i am off for new york watch out for me lie. She tried her luck she tried for six months to get someone to hire her, knocking on doors. She couldnt even get a meeting. At this moment women are not in news rooms. Even the Margaret Fullers, the few women who were able to write and get published are not doing it in a newsroom. If they are its the women section, its segregated. The newsroom was a dirty, interesting place. It was not thought to be in appropriate place for a lady, right . That is where she wanted to be. She finally gets john calk rum, the managing editor of the new york world, you might remember is owned by joseph pulitzer, right . At this point is competing with other newspapers in new york city. One of his chief rivals, of course, William Randolph hearst, who owned the new york journal. The type of news that had started with the penny press is carrying over into the 18 70s, 80s, 90s, well eventually khamenei in this period we sometimes call yellow journalism. This period of sensationalism in some newspapers. Headlines get bigger and splash here. Newspapers use more illustrations. The idea, again, is to draw in more people. Drawl in more readers. Keep them coming back so we can then charge more for our advertising. Nellie bly gets a meeting with john cockerel. She tells him her ideas. We need to write about these dirty conditions in our cities we need to write about the poor and how they are treated i want to cover these stories. He says, okay, tell you what, you cover a story about blackwells island which was the insane asylum that was a very scary place to be. I will give you a job. She takes the challenge and she fakes insanity, which, to be fair, but not entirely difficult to do at the time, right . Especially for a woman. For a woman to get thrown into an insane asylum all it took was her husband say, shes crazy. They would lock her up, for real. So she fakes her way into this insane asylum. With the promise that the paper is going to send a lawyer to break her out which eventually it does. She rented ten park dramatic series that its called ten days in a madhouse. The paper runs it with illustrations. It tells about the awful conditions and mistreatment of the patients there. Abuse, unhealthy food, poor treatment, dirty conditions. It was such a big deal when it was published that it resulted in an official investigation of the asylum. Additional money was put in the budget to approve conditions there and reforms were made. That she makes herself a what is noteworthy about nellie blys writing is that she makes herself a central character in the story. She writes with a with drama, with breathlessness she writes in the first person. It is riveting it keeps people coming back. We might consider this investigative reporting in fact. She was gaining access to a close space and reporting on the conditions there, exposing a public problem. Another way we might think of it is as [inaudible]. Stunt journalism is a term that is often used to denigrate what people like nellie bly did. She didnt just fake her way into an essay in asylum, she also went around the world. She made it her mission to beat the fictitious character and jewels reruns novel around the world in 80 days. She makes a deal with her newspaper, the new york world, im going to do this. Im gonna go around the world. Sure, go to it. That becomes the story. Shes traveling around the world. She is reporting back from where she is. Readers are wondering, is she going to make it . Is she going to do it . The new york world goes nuts for this. They create a board game. There are nellie bly dolls. She becomes a national celebrity. Elizabeth, this part often get lets out. A woman named elizabeth bid flynn was writing for what was called then the cosmopolitan magazine and it looks very different back then. Business lynns editor when he heard that nellie bly was pulling this stunt and he said i want you to go beat. Are they only gave her a few hours notice. She left eight hours after nellie bly. They raced around the world. She didnt win which is probably why she has largely been forgotten. This is a new type of journalism. Blind continue to write, analyzing stories, always siding with the underdog. She wrote sympathetic stories about the poor. Women in marginalized groups are treated by police. She traveled to chicago where she covered a strike. She was the only reporter to write story from the workers perspective. She wrote profiles of interesting people. A boxer, a suffragist, an anarchist. She introduced a new genre for women. All right, this trend would trickle out and influence women at other newspapers. William Randolph Hearst had his own stunt reporters. Oh woman with the pen name of annie laurie worked for hearst at the San Francisco examiner where she, similar to what blind had done, faked a fainting spell in the middle of a busy road just to test the ambulance response time. When a devastating hurricane hit galveston, texas, in 1900 she dressed as a man to be allowed to go cover the devastation there for her newspaper. She eventually also made her way to new york city. I also have noticed this trend in other newspapers, local newspapers. Here in iowa a woman by the name of Dorothy Ashby pound writing about camp dodge during world war i and 1918 pulled stunts, so to speak, where she would put herself into the story. Girl reporter takes mess with the soldiers. Google reporter gets masked. Puts on a gas mask just to write about it. Its a spectacle. Lets see what this girl can get herself into this time. It was treated as entertainment. It was a bit scandalous because these women are putting themselves in danger. They are putting themselves out in public. It got attention and it got eyeballs. They got between tampa role that emerges at this time, given the derogatory term of sob sisters violent body by a woman name dorothy dicks. She was the pioneer of advice columnist. At the time she became the most widely read and the Richest Woman journalist in the country. Her name was Elizabeth Mary whether kilmer. She began her career in new orleans. She was married. You guessed it, she was also widowhood her husband had been mentally unstable old, had a lot of problems and eventually he died. Meaning that she had to find work. In her case she was acquainted with a neighbor, a woman by the name of eliza nicholson. She owned the new Orleans Times s pecuniary, took pretty on her and hired her to write a story that turned out to be so good that she brought her on and as a columnist. In 1894, gilmore begins writing, sunday sally. A call in on the sunday page which turns into dorothy dix talks. That was the pen name, dorothy dix was the pending she had given herself. She also was firmly on the side of women, the poor, and the disenfranchised. She wrote more about domestic matters than nearly blind and the stunt reporters would do but she always displayed and appeal to common sense andy sympathetic ear, it made her instantly popular. She did write about important things. She wrote about temperance, the movement to prohibit alcohol. That was a really important issue for women who felt victimized by their husbands or women husbands abuse because of drinking. She wrote about a motion. One of her columns was called the selfishness of man. It was about the ship that sank in 1898 killing 545 people. Of the 200 people that were saved from that shipwreck only one was a woman. The story was that the people who had saved themselves were crewmembers and man from steerage who were alleged to have murdered women in children to save themselves. It was a pretty big deal. She wrote about it. She wrote tragically, she wrote from the feminine perspective. That was what she was hired to do. Because publishers had learned that femininity could be marketable. You take the commercialization of the press, you take the notions of femininity, you combine them. A form of writing that cells that gets attention, that serves the purposes of the publishers. Historian alice false called this time the creation of a modern public space. A sphere that was being created in which women now had a voice for the first time. Women wrote about crimes of passion. The sob sisters did. It was here that they got their name. This was a story from 1907. The crime of the century 20th century had a lot of trials of the century and crimes of the century. In this case a wealthy, philandering, Unstable Society man had murdered in new york city architect on the roof of Madison Square garden because his wife, a beautiful social climber, had once been with the architect and then got married to the guy with the gun, had to explain why she wasnt a virgin. The reason that she gave was that it had been against her will, causing the unstable, gun toting husband to hunt down the architect and kill him. You can imagine what this story was like in new york city at this time, right . It ended in a trial. This was scandalous stuff. This was going to be a trial that hinged on testimony about sacks, bondage, there was a velvet swing involved. It was really, really, scandalous at the time women did not sit on juries in new york city. Many observers thought that this courtroom, especially in this trial, was no place for a woman we will be discussing matters that are that inappropriate. Four formidable reporters demanded that they be allowed to cover the trial for the readers. The judge allowed them there to sit at a table, four in a row, watching, observing, and writing about the characters involved. The male reporters were none too pleased. Did they feel threatened . Perhaps. The Newspaper Publishers put the women there to provide a womans perspective. To write emotionally. Dorothy dix, ada paterson, annie laurie, granddaughter of horrific really. One of the male colleagues wrote a column saying this is a travesty. These women should not be here. They should not be allowed. He called them sob sisters and the label stuck. What i want to say about this is that this influenced generations of women to come. While these women may not have been respected, while they may have been treated as girl reporters. As spectacles, as sob sisters. They found a way to make their voices heard they found a way to raise issues that werent being discussed they found a way to advocate for themselves and four other women and marginalized people. Moving forward, a lot of women were wore this label proudly. The woman i mentioned before from iowa called herself a sob sister she wore proudly. It enabled her to do a type of work that she enjoyed. She found professionally fulfilling. Pioneers like nellie bly and dorothy dix inspired women to flock to newspapers at the end of the 1890s and the start of the 20th century. When nellie bly started her career only 5 of journalist for women. That would rise to about 25 in 1930. We see a real influx of women into the newsroom at this time. I think he is important to know that these women were doing stump thing that women had not done before. They were not following the model of stare just of the hail. They were not even following the model of Margaret Fuller. The gender was working for them. They had to fight to get their. They found a way. They found a way to create a public space for themselves and to create womens voices. Im curious to know what your questions are. There is a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. What questions does this raise for you . Are there any barriers in journalism today that women still have to overcome . They are yours in journalism today that women are still having to overcome . That is a really excellent question. But i will tell you is this. I just threw out a number, in 1930 women, newsrooms are about 25 female, right . The proportion today is not all that much higher. It is about a third. When you look at the period from 1930 to 2016 you might expect it to be a little higher but it is not. It has remained stuck at about 36 for quite a long time. I think it is a really good question. What i will say is the history of women in journalism shows that these individual women often created jobs for themselves by creating something new, a new genre. So nellie bly created stunt reporting. It hadnt existed before, it was successful and it got repeated, imitated, right . A woman that i have written about, in the 1930s called Sylvia Porter created personal finance journalism. It was a new thing. It hadnt existed. She was not allowed to do what other financial journalist for doing, she did something new. She worked her way around it. What happens when women create these new genres is oftentimes that particular genre gets attached to their gender start reporting become something that women do. Do you know what im saying . While women create these opportunities and open doors where the doors had been close before, sometimes he creates what might be called ghettos, they are stereotyped and the expectation becomes they will stay in those specific roles rather than really being able to branch out. Thats really good question. For those beginning women paid a lot less than the man in the newspapers . Where the early women reporters paid a lot less than the male reporters . Of course. Absolutely. I mean dorothy dix, some of the enterprising women, the ones who really smart about it, she trademark her name. She became syndicated. She became pretty wealthy. That was few and far between. For the most part yeah. They were not hired as fulltime, salaried journalists. Usually they had to prove themselves by doing freelance work. Getting paid space rates. They got paid per column inch or for the content that they provided that was a lot different than getting a salary. Absolutely. The expectation, to, was man where the breadwinners. Even if a woman did not have a male provider it was still assumed that she wasnt a breadwinner like a man would be in a family. [inaudible] okay, wasnt just women who had panned names or did all reporters have pen aims to protect themselves . Pen names were used by both men and women, more often by women. I mark twain, obviously, Samuel Clements went by mark twain. You would have columnists, men who wrote newspaper columns often gave themselves a pen name to give a persona to the column. Women used pen names more often though to protect themselves. It wasnt necessarily respected that they were being so public with themselves. Also because, depending on what they were writing about how you will see this as we move into the 20th century. Women start to use initials to hide their gender. While nellie bly and dorothy dix chose very feminine pen names because they are reporting was very gendered, if a woman wanted to write about something that was not gendered, so to speak. Finance, politics, she would often use initials. You couldnt see that she was a woman. Yes, question . [inaudible] why is the . Do you see that changing in the near future . You look at the ratios of women to man in the news room why is that . Do i see that changing . That is a really, really, good question. The reason its so interesting is that classrooms, journalism and matt communication are about two thirds women. In programs it is about two thirds women. When you look at newsrooms the ratio has flipped. Fulltime journalists working in news organizations women hover around 36 . The higher you go in the ranks the lower that percentage gets. Women i think are 18 of publishers why is that . Really good question. My scholarship and other scholarship has shown that it is an issue of culture. This relates to my earlier response about individual people finding ways to be successful when there are constraints, right . Finding length work around discrimination finding ways to use what they have, use their resources, to make their way. That is different than the culture of a place changing, right . For the early women letting one, two, three women into a news room is a lot different than the newsroom changing. To incorporate womens voices, experiences, and perspectives. I think what you find when you look at the history is a lot of the time even as numbers go up, this doesnt just apply to women but it applies to racial and ethnic minorities, other places where we see issues of diversity, just hiring people who are different and bringing them into a system that remains the same doesnt do much to encourage real inclusion or diversity of perspective over the long term. My position is it is a issue of culture and is one thing to come into a new term, it is another thing to change the culture. Yes . [inaudible] what if the history of women in sports journalism . Another really great question. Throughout the 20th century women had to fight really hard to be allowed to cover, especially men sports. Sports, some of these areas like sports, politics, hard news they are considered very masculine beats. Women really didnt get to cover sports in any notable numbers until the 1970s affirmative action policies. Even then there were lots of issues surrounding access to athletes. Locker room interviews. Harassment on the job. More i would say that sports is one of those areas that is sort of one of the last areas to become accepting of women, and it is still a work in progress. Yes . [inaudible] do you have a favorite or more of influential female journalist . Based on my own research do i have a favorite . Do i have a favorite journalist . You know, i have to say that the person that that i wrote about i wrote a biography of Sylvia Porter she is still probably my favorite female journalist to talk about. She started working during the depression. Her father had died, she was brilliant she started working during the depression you wanted to cover finance she created a real empire. She became the brand she was read by 40 million people. Whats interesting to me about her is people dont know who she is now. At the time she was as well known as oprah, Martha Stewart were, she made the top of the list of the most influential women. History is full of interesting people. Certainly some of these women are fascinating as well. [inaudible] today me with any of the suffragists . That is a really good question. Did these women meet with the suffragists, right about the suffragists, where they involved in the Suffragist Movement . Nellie bly did, she interviewed and wrote a profile on susan b anthony, the famous suffragist. She did write profiles on women who are part of the movement if they were supportive of the movement i will say that these women are different than the women like Amelia Bloomer who was a publisher of a women Suffragist Movement. These women women working in newspapers are not part of the movement they cover the movement there is a separate type of female journalist who journalism serves the movement, they are part of it. You have separate sort of suffragist newspapers and publications that are politically involved and engaged. These women they were supportive but not necessarily of the movement. Good question. Do you think there will be a type of journalism today that could make someone as famous as nellie bly . That is a really interesting question. I wonder if it exists, right . Social media it would seem that something similar could absolutely i could envision a. This type of reporting now might be called immersion reporting. They have different labels overtime. Absolutely i also think there are a lot of parallels between the upheaval we are seeing now in the Business Models of journalism and the ways that newspapers develop new Business Models in the 19th century the model of charging for advertising and aiming for high circulation, they might not be panning out for news organizations on the internet. They will be developing into from model. Who knows what we will see . Yes . Women in households in public absorbing the media [inaudible] was there any backlash from husbands or families who didnt want people to read nellie bly . Big question for women at home engaging with this content. Where they reading it . Was there any backlash . Absolutely im sure there was backlash absolutely women are not a Homogenous Group so just like sarah hale was not at all supporter of Margaret Fuller or appreciative of her there were plenty of women who thought that nellie bly was a horror, scandalous right . As to the question of were people eating the content up . Yes, they were. That really gets to this larger point of what commercialization made possible even if this is inappropriate behavior for a lady, it makes money, right . This populist form of journalism we came away for women to make their way. Make their way into the industry. Bring numbers with them, make a profit for the owners of these newspapers then who is to stop them . All and there. Thank you all very much. 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