You all can imagine. So im just going to dive right into it. The title of todays talk is subreporters and sob sisters. Because its a new job that emerged for women. And i want to tell you the story of how some pretty bold and r remarkable women sized 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 for others when womens voices were not welcomed or, or respected that much. So history is always the story of individuals responding creatively to the conditions and circumstances in which they live. And so, to really understand how this unfolded and how this new type of job, that being a newspaper reporter, in some of the biggest cities of the country, to understand how this came about, we really have to back up and talk about the business of journalism in the 1800s. And specifically, i want to talk about a new Business Model that emerged in the 1830s, called the penny press. Okay. This was a new type of newspaper that began in new york city, right . Any ideas why it would have been called the penny press . It was cheaper, absolutely. It was sold for a penny. You know, this was a new idea in journalism. Until then, newspapers had been sold mainly by subscription. They catered to the Business Class and political elites, and they were far more exppensive. They cost about 10 a year for a subscription, which was a lot of money back then, and up to six pennies for one issue. The idea for a cheap newspaper actually didnt come from a journalist at all. It came from a medical student named horatio shepherd, who noticed as he walked to medical school in new york city how many vendors were on the streets selling things for just a penny. And what he noticed was that people were willing to buy anything for a penny. You know. They were willing to give up a penny pretty easily. So he so his idea was why not sell a newspaper for a penny and fill it with content that would be of interest that particular day, that would be entertaining that would, you know, give people a reason to buy it. So he tried, this medical student, with the help of our friend horace greeley, you remember him of the new york tribune. And it failed. It didnt work out for him. However, other people took up the challenge and made a go of it. So, these newspapers, these penny papers had some characteristics that made them different. For one thing, they catered to the masses. Right . Because 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, right . So, 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, they wrote every day kind of news. Right i right . They were catering to the mass over the class, so to speak, right . So, what else . They were competitive. As more apomornd more of these cropped up they competed for the most uptotheminute information. They wrote tall tales sometimes, scandalous types of things, and the biggest difference was that now because their purpose was to attract lots of eyeballs, they could charge more for advertising, right . So this is a shift in the Business Model of journalism, and its one thats probably still recognizable to you today. 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. You can see there, it says price 1 cent. And the motto of the new york sun was it shines for all. Why that motto . Because it was aimed, again, at regular people, not just opinioned leaders, right . 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, expanding voting privileges. Were giving, you know, average americans a feeling of more enfranchisement, a greater interest in the affairs of their communities, and steam power, of course, was making it possible to print many more copies of these newspapers than could have been printed before. But, again, if you print a lot of newspapers, you have to sell a lot of newspapers, so 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 . Say that again . Absolutely. You get out on the treastreet. You sell newspapers, yeah, and maybe you sensationalize a bit, right . And that is, in fact, what the new york sun was, was known for. It, one of its, its most successful sort of sear eavries called the great moon hoax, in which they reported that life had been discovered on the moon. They reported on an article that had been written in a scottish journal, allegedly reporting this discovery. There allegedly was plant life and fauna on the moon and even some winged batlike creatures that resembled the flying monkeys in the wizard of oz much later. But in the 1835, thats what they said lived on the moon. Well, of course this was a tall tale. Of course it was a hum bug, it was made up. And all the other papers called out the new york sun for making this up. And they never admitted it, but not only that, its circulation rose to rival that of the times of london which, by that time was the mostread newspaper in the 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 hadnt been done before. Another type or another newspaper that was founded about this time was the new york herald, founded in 1835 by james bennett. His mission was a little different. His mission was to provide a correct picture of the world, 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, he came out and said, you know, we dont practice any particular religion, you know . Were in the protestants, were not catholics. He called things what they were. He used really frank language. If you can me ibelieve it, he used the word legs instead of limbs. He used words like pantaloons. He called things what they were. And he dared people in the upper classes to challenge him. He was extremely innovative. And a lot of what we recognize in journalism today is a result of bennetts innovation. He came up with the idea of personal ads to create more revenue for his newspaper. He established the beat system of reporting, right . You still go into newsrooms and people will tell you what particular beat theyre covering. Meaning that somebody is assigned to cover courts. Somebody is assigned to cover crime. Somebody is assigned to cover politics. That was bennetts innovation. Right, he established the thifi Washington Press corps. Previous to that, lawmakers, when they had hearings and debates, in good time, they would provide that to the washington papers to publish. Bennett was the first to say, we should be covering this in real time, as soon as its happening. So he created a press corps to do that. He changed the definition of news. So why is this important . Why am i starting with the penny press . Its because i want you to keep this in mind, right . As mark twain said, whatever it is that newspapers say their objective is, its actually to make money. Thats their real motivation. And so keep that in mind. As we switch gears a little bit, okay . Because 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, okay . What did people think about gender and what it meant to be a man versus a woman . There are two primary ideas here. That, that are important. One is the notion of separate spheres for men and women. The ideology of this period was that mens work was, was public. It was important. It was for men. And that women had other attributes, other qualities. They were natural caretakers, and that the two spheres should be kept separate. Right . Men were assumed to be naturally more intelligent, you know, active, in charge, right . Aggressive. Women were assumed to be better at raising the children and running the household, you know, obviously, at this time, women, they couldnt 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. Right . It was believed that god intended men to be the leaders and that god intended women to take care of their families, physically, spiritually, intellectually. It was believed that well were, so to speak, the better sex, that they were purer. Of mind and heart, right . And that they were needed to sort of keep their men folk in le line and to keep their families on a straight spiritual path. T and it was taking a distinction between public, the public realm, which was that of work and politics and men and the private realm, which was the provence of women, the home, the domestic life of a particular family. So separation of spheres. Men and well are to omen are to apart. Barbara welter wrote about the cult of true womanhood in the 1800s. And what she meant by this was to be a lady, a proper lady at this time required four things of women. Piety. They had to be pious, which meant they had to be religious, purity, they had to be pure of mind and body. Right . Submissiveness. They had to be submissive to the men in their lives. And finally, domestic. They had to be welltrained 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, being the protected, a protected class. However, there were also chains to that pedestal, because it restricted their areas of influence, right . It restricted their opportunities and what they were able to do and of course it always depended on their livelihoods depended on the ability of the men around them to properly, to care for them, to provide for them materially and physically, and we know that that didnt always happen, which is something that will come up a bit later. Okay. So whats a girl to do . In this situation . Right . What if you needed to work . What if you needed money . What if you had lost your male provider . Right . How would you negotiate this situation . What if you wanted to work, to write, to be a professional . What if you had things to say . What kinds of transtrategies co you use . Well, there are two women who i think really illustrate the response to these types of conditions, and if you look at them, they look very similar, right in dont they look alike . They look like they could be the same woman, right . But they, in fact, were very different people, and they did not like each other. One of them was Sarah Josepha hale, the other Margaret Fuller. And i want to talk about their experiences as influential, extremely significant women journalists of their day, because, again, it sets the d stage for whats to come. So Sarah Josepha hale, the first woman editor of a womens magazine, godeys ladys book. It obtained circulations that had not been dreamed of before. Extremely important person in journalism of the 1800s. She was a widow. She was widowed by her husband. And had five children to feed. She needed to work. Right . She started to write. She had had limited education, mainly what she was able to get in her home. But she wrote poetry, and 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, so there you have it. Sarah josepha hale wrote mary had a little lamb. But she was best known as an influential editor. She was the embodiment of a lady for her time. She had impeccable taste in fashion and home decor and literature. She was ast traditionally feminine as you could get. She was deeply religious, right . And and she used this editorship of this magazine to tell women how they could best live up to gods plan for them. How think could bhels caest car their family and children. She helped found vassar college, which was a womens college. She believed that women should be physicians. Right . However, she didnt believe that women should vote. She believed in education for women, because it would help them to take care of their families, because it would help, it would help women carry out their godgiven duties, right . So he wshe was extremely influential. She lobbied to make thanksgiving a holiday. She finally got lincoln to do it, so it was i guess partly her doing that we celebrate thanksgiving as a national holiday. So thats Sarah Josepha hale. Margaret fuller is a different story. Margaret fuller, remarkable, brilliant woman, educated by her father. Who encouraged her, gave her classical education in greek, latin, french, italian, philosophy, history. They lived in cambridge, massachusetts, right . 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. But yet, she was highly intelligent. She was recognized as being highly intelligent, and the family had, you know, a strong intellectual cell around them. But her father went broke. He ended up having to go to a farm. She ended up taking care of everybody. Again, loss of a male provider required her to become a teacher. That was one of the accepted jobs for women, always, was teaching. Because it was, right, it was part of caretaking and bringing up children. Eventually, she got bored. She moved back to the boston area. She hung out with the transcendentalists. Together this group formed a magazine called the dial, and they made her editor. I have a hunch they just sort of wanted her to do all the work of editor. But she did it. And, and she was proud of it. And it was a, it was a very wellreceived, criticallyacclaimed magazine. So shes in this circle of friends. You know, shes moving and shaking with some of the deepest thinkers of her time. Everybody knows that shes brilliant, shes capable. Shes got stuff to say, oh, except nobody wanted to marry her, because she wasnt perceived as being lady like. Rig right . She wasnt doing what sarah hale was doing. She was not, you know, fulfilling some kind of traditional image of what it meant to be a lady. And this frustrated her, deeply. She, she wrote a book in 1845, called woman in the 19th century, a feminist book. She got the attention of horace greeley, again, you notice he keeps coming up. Horace greeley of the new york tribune who was impressed with her, who hired her to be a literary critic. Shes not in the newsroom. Shes right, you know, shes writing from home. Shes a correspondent, but gr l greeley gives her some opportunities that hadnt been available to well before, and she becomes the first female foreign correspondent. He sends her to europe, and she responds with letters and correspondence about goings on in, and all sorts of countries. Sarah hale thought that Margaret Fuller was not a good role model. And this is what sarah hale had to say about Margaret Fuller. She thought that she was ignoring the one true book. What is the one true book, do you think . Yes, the bible. And that fuller, according to hale, was proof that the greater the intellectual force, the greater and more errors women fall when they wander from the rock foundation, christ the savior. So fuller was influential, right, but she also was to be, she was treated as sort of a freak. She didnt get to be, you know, both a public intellectual and a Brilliant Writer and a traditional woman. It just wasnt, it wasnt in the cards for her. And in fact, her story, shes in europe, you know, writing for horace greeley, she meets a guy, ten years younger, Giovanni Angelo. Which sound, i dont know about you guys, but Giovanni Angelo sounds pretty exciting to me. They had, they became lovers. They had a baby out of wedlock. They got married later. Got involved in the roman revolution, sailed off for america, and then drowned. Their ship wrecked off the coast of fire island. And they drowned, and their bodies were never found. Isnt that sad . So kind of a sad, i sort of feel like she was just coming into her own, you know . And it didnt, didnt work out for her. All right, so this was the model for women in journalism. In the 1800s. Which sets the stage for nellie bly, who is a name im sure you all have heard, right . I mean, when you, when people talk about the history of journalism and history of women in journalism, nellie blys name always comes up. She has her own stamp. Shes very wellknown. And the reason shes so wellknown is because she was extremely significant. Publishers in it for money, trying to drive up circulation, get eyeballs. On the one hand, women caught in this sort of dilemma. On the other hand, traditional femininity, right . Versus, you know, a profession, a writing life. Not being able to negotiate it very well. How are these things going to come together . They came together in the form of nellie bly. So 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, when she was just 6 years old. Her nickname was pink, by the way, which i think is neat. Her father had been married before. He had a, and had Something Like ten children. She was a result of the second marriage. Five children in that family. And when he died, he hadnt left any provisions for the second family. So they were broke. So, again, she, when she was a teenager, she went off to school to become a teacher, because if a woman was smart and wanted to work, that was often what she did. But when she read a newspaper column in a local pittsburgh newspaper that called women, worki 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 other women, that it was necessary for women to work, a lot of times, right . And 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. And that situation had not worked out. So nellie bly was really aware of some of the scary predicaments that women could get themselves into. And, and had sympathy for it. So she yet a letter wrote a let editor for that, and he was so impressed that he hired her and gave her the pen name nellie bly. She was feisty. She gave voice to issues that had not got and hearing before. The paper confined her to the womens page, which, by this time, newspapers had begun to publish, as a way to draw in women readers. Again, new Business Model. Advertising, eyeballs. Women are making a lot of decisions for their families. Advertisers want to reach women. Newspapers start womens pages and are now interested in this type of content, right . So thats where they try to keep her. Writing about fashion. They try to assign her stories about flowers and the stuff that would have made Sarah Josepha hale really happy. Except she kept busting out. She wrote stories about divorce laws. Called for a reform of divorce laws. Largely because of her mothers experience. She wrote about conditions for women who worked in factories. She wrote about the medical treatment of the poor. Right . She even convinced the pittsburgh paper to send her to mexico. And it was there that she really started to get this taste of adventure. She came back, and the newspaper tried to put her back on the womens page, and she said, you know, im, im bored. Im going to go to new york. And she left a note for the columnist who had called working women a monstrosity that just said, dear qo. That was his pen name, dear qo, im off for new york, look out for me, bly. So she tried her luck. For six months, she tried to get someone to hire her, knocking on doors. She couldnt even get a meeting, because at this moment women are not in newsrooms, right . So even the Margaret Fullers, even the few women who are able to write and get published are not doing it in a newsroom. And if they are, theyre in the well womens section, theyre segregated. The newsroom was a dirty, you know, interesting place. But it was not thought to be an appropriate place for a lady. Right . And thats where she wanted to be. She finally gets john cockerell, the managing editor of the new york world, to take a meeting with her. Now the new york world, you might remember is owned by . Joseph pulitzer, right . Who, at this point is competing with other newspapers in new york city, one of his chief rivals, of course is William Randolph hearst who owned the new york journal. Because the type of news that had started with the penny press is carrying over into the 1870s, 80s, 90s and eventually will culminate in this period we sometimes call yellow journalism, which is this period of sensationalism in some newspapers. Right . Headlines get bigger and splashier. Newspapers use more illustrations. Right . And the idea, again, is to draw in more people, draw in more readers. Keep them coming back so that we can then charge more for our advertising. So nellie bly gets a meeting with john cockerell. And he tells him her ideas. You know, we need to write about these dirty conditions in our cities. We need to write about, you know, the poor and how theyre treated. You know, i want to cover these stories. And 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. And ill give you a job. She takes the challenge. And she fakes insanity, which, to be fair, wasnt 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 saying, yeah, shes crazy, and theyd lock her up for real. So she fakes her way into this insane asylum and, with the promise that the papers going to send a lawyer to break her out, which eventually it does. She writes a tenpart, dramatic series that is called ten days in a madhouse. The paper runs it with illustrations, and it tells about the awful conditions and mistreatment of the patients there. Abuse, unhealthy food. You know, poor, poor treatment. Dirty conditions. It was so, it was such a big deal when it, when it was published that it resulted in an official investigation of the asylum. Additional money was put in the budget to improve conditions there and reforms were made. So whats noteworthy about nellie blys writing is that she makes herself a central character in the story. Right . She writes with a, with a, withdraw with drama, with this breathlessness. She writes in the first person. Its riveting, and it keeps people, it keeps people coming back. We might consider this investigative reporting. In fact. You know, she was gaining access to a closed space and reporting on the conditions there and exposing, you know, a public problem. Right . Another way we might think of it is as stunt journalism. Now 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 insane asylum. She went around the world. She made it her mission to beat the fictitious character in jules vernes novel around the world in 80 days. Im going to go around the world, sure, go to it. And then that becomes the story. Shes traveling around the world. Shes reporting back from where she is. Shes, you know, readers are wondering, is she going to make it . Is she going to do it . They, the new yonew york worlds with this. They create a board game. There are dolls. She becomes a national celebrity. Elizabeth, this part often gets left out. A woman named elizabeth was writing for the cosmopolitan magazine. Its different than todays cosmopolitan magazine. She wanted to beat her. They raced around the world. From ships and trains and she didnt win, which is probably why she has largely been forgotten. So this is a, this is a new, a new type of journalism. Bly continued to write tantalizing stories. She always sided with the underdog. She wrote sympathetic stories about the poor, about how women in marginalized groups were treated by police. She traveled to chicago where she covered a strike and she was the only reporter to write the story from the workers perspective. 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, right . A woman with a pen name of annie laurie worked for hearst at the San Francisco examiner where she, similar to what bly had done, faked a fainting spill in the middle of the road to test the ambulance response time, right . She also, when a devastating hurricane hit galveston, texas in 1900, she dressed at a man to be allowed to cover the she eve also made her way to new york city. But i also have noticed this trend in other newspapers and in local newspapers, here in iowa. A woman by the name of dorothy ash by writing about camp dodge about world war i in 1918 pulled stunts where she would put herself into the story. Girl reporter takes mess or girl reports puts on a gas mask to write about it. This was 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, putting themself out themselves out in public. But it got attention and it got eyeballs. Right. So they got the mask over the class. Now a twin time of role that emerges at the time with the often given the derogatory name of sob sister is a well embodies by a woman named dorothy dix. She was the pioneer of advice columnists, at the time she was she became the most widely read and the Richest Woman journalist in the country. Her name was Elizabeth Mary wix gilmore and she began her career in new orleans. She was married, but you guessed it, she was also widowed. Her husband had been mentally unstable and had a lot of problems and eventually he died. Meaning that she had to find work. And in her case, she was acquainted with a neighbor, a woman by the name of Aliza Nicholson who owned the Times Picayune and hired her to write a story which turned out to be so good that she brought her on as a columnist. So in 1894 she gyps writing sunday salad, a column on the womens page and that turns into dorothy dix talks. That was the pen name she had given herself. She was firmly on the side of women. And the poor and the disenfranchised. She wrote more about domestic matters than nelly bly and the stunt reporters would do. But she always displayed an appealing common sense and a sympathetic ear that made her instantly popular and she did write about important things. She wrote about temperance, which was the movement to prohibit alcohol. That was really important issue for a lot of women who felt victimized by husbands or fathers drinking and abuse. Right. She wrote emotionally. She wrote one of her most famous columns, was called the selfishness of men and about a sink that sank in 1898 killing people and only one person saved was a woman. And the story was that the people who were saved themselves were crew members an men from steerage who alleged to murder women and children to save themselves. So it was a big deal and she wrote about it. She wrote tragically, she wrote from a feminine perspective. That was what she was hired to do. Because publishers had learned that femininity could be marketable. Right. So you take the commercialization of the press and you take these notions of femininity and you combine them into a form of writing that sells, that gets attention, that is that serves the purposes of the publishers, right. Historian alice falls called this time a the creation of a modern public space. A sphere, right, so it was being created and in which women now have a voice for the first time. Women wrote about crimes of passion, the sob sisters and it was here that they got their name. This was a a story from 1907. It was a famous the crime of the century, 20th century had a lot of trial and crime of the century and a wealthy philandering society man had murdered a prominent architect on the roof of Madison Square garden because his wife a beautiful social climber had once ben been with the architect and then got married to the guy with the gun and had to explain why she wasnt a virgin. And the reason that she gave was that it had been against her will, causing the unstable guntoting husband to hunt down the architect and kill him. So you can imagine what this story was like in new york city at this time, right. And it ended in a trial, right. This was scandalous stuff. This was going to be a trial that hinged on testimony about sex and bondage and there was a velvet swing involved and it was really it was really scandalous. At the time women didnt sit on juries in new york city, right. And many observers thought this courtroom, especially in this trial, was no place for a woman. If we wore going to be were going to be discussing matters that were that inappropriate, right. But four formidable reporters demanded that they be allowed to cover the trial for their readers and 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. But the Newspaper Publishers put the women there to provide the womans perspective, to provide to write emotionally, right. Dorothy dix, ada patterson. Annie laurie and the granddaughter of forest greeley, one of the male colleagues wrote a column saying this is a travesty, these women should not be here, should not be allowed and called them sob sisters an the label stuck, right. So what i want to say about this is that this influenced generations of women to come. So while these women may not have been respected, while they may have been treated as girl reporters, as spectacles, right, as sob sisters, they found a way to make their voices heard, right. They found a way to raise issues that werent being discussed. They found a way to advocate for themselves and for other women and marginalized people. And moving forward a lot of women wore this label proudly. The women i had mentioned before from iowa called herself a sob sister but she wore it proudly. Because it enabled her to do a type of work that she enjoyed, that she found that she found professionally fulfilling, right. So, pioneers like nelly bly and dorothy dix inspired women to flock to newspapers at the end of the 1890s and into the 20th century, when nelly bly started her career only about 5 of journalists were women. That would rise to about 25 in 1930. So we see a real influx of women into the newsroom about this time. And i think it is important to note that these women were doing what women had not done before and they were not following the model of sarah joseph hail and not following the model of Margaret Fuller, but their gender was working for them. Right. They had to fight to get there. But they found a way. And they found a way to create a public space for themselves and to make womens voices heard. Now, im curious to know what your questions are . That is a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. So what questions does this raise for you . Is there any barriers that women are still having to overcome. Are there any barriers in journal imtoday that women are still having to overcome . That is a really excellent question. And what i would tell you is this. I just threw out the number 25 , but in about 1930 women newsrooms were about 25 female, right. That proportion today is not all that much higher. It is about a third. So, when you look at the period from 1930 to 2016, you might expect it to be a little higher, but it is not. Its remained stuck at about i would say 36 for for quite a long time. So i think it is a really good question. What i will say is that the history of women in journalism shows that these individual women often created jobs for themselves by creating something new. A ji genre. So she created stunt reporting. It hadnt existed before and it was successful. And it got repeated and it got imitated. A woman that i written about at the beginning, or in the 19 in the 1930s named Silvia Porter created financial journalism. It was a new thing. She wasnt allowed to do what other financial journalists did, so she worked her way around it. What happens when that when women create these new genres is often time that particular genre gets attached to their gender. So personal finance becomes something that women do. Or stunt reporting becomes something that women do. You see what im saying. So i think sometimes while these individuals create these opportunities and open doors where the doors had been closed before, sometimes that also creates what we might call ghettos, where they are sort of stereo type and the expectation is theyll stay in those specific roles rather than really being able to branch out. That is a really good question. Thank you. [ inaudible question ]. Were the early women reporters paid less than the male reporters. Of course. Absolutely. Now dorothy dix, and some of the enterprising women could the ones that were smart about it, she trademarked her name and became syndicated, she became pretty wealthy. But that was few and far between. For the most part, yeah. And they were not hired as fulltime salaried journalists. They had to prove themself by doing freelance work, getting paid space rates, meaning they got paid per column inch or for the content that they provided. That was a lot different than getting a salary. So, you know, so yeah, absolutely. And the expectation, too, was that men were the breadwinners. So even if a woman didnt have a meal provider, it was still it was still assumed that she wasnt a breadwinner, like a man would be in a similar situation. [ inaudible question ]. So was it just women who had pen names or did all reporters have pen names to protect themselves . Pen names were they were used by both men and women, more often by women. But you saw i mean mark twain, Samuel Clemens and you had columnists, men who wrote columns, newspaper columns often game themselves a pen name to give a persona to the column. Women used pen names more often, though, to protect themselves, because it wasnt necessarily respected that they were being so sort of public with themselves, right. And also because depending on what they were writing about, and you see this as we move into the 20th century, women start using initials to hide their gender. So while nelly bly and dorothy dix chose pen names because their reporting was very gendered, if it a woman a woman wanted to write about something that was not gendered, so to speak, that was in finance or politics, she would often use initials, so that you couldnt see that she was a woman. There is a question here. You said that [ inaudible question ]. Okay. So when you look at the ratios of women to men in the newsroom, why is that and do i see that changing . That is a really good question. And the reason it is so interesting is that classrooms in journalism and Mass Communication are about twothirds women. Right. In our programs, it is about twothirds women and when you look at newsrooms, the ratio is flipped. So fulltime journalists working in news organizations, you know, women hover around 36 . And the higher go you, sort of in the ranks, the lower that percentage gets. So that women today are about, i would say, i think 18 of publishers. Why is that . Which is a really good question. My scholarship and other scholarship has shown that it is an issue of culture. And this relates to my earlier response, about individual people finding ways to be successful. When there are constraints. Right, finding ways to work around discrimination and finding ways to to use what they have, use their resources to make their way. But that is different than the culture of a place changing, right. So for the early women, letting one woman, two women, three women into a newsroom, you know, is a lot different than the newsroom changing, right, to incorporate these womens voices and perspective. What you find when you look at history, a lot of times even as numbers go up, and this is this doesnt just apply to women, but it applies to racial and ethnic minorities, and other places where we see issues of diversity, just you know, hiring people who are different and bringing them into a system that remains the same, right, doesnt do much to encourage real inclusion or diversity of perspectives over the longterm. So my position is that it is an issue of culture. It is one thing to come into a newsroom, it is another to change the culture. Yes. Women in sports journalism [ inaudible question ]. Women in sports journalism. Another really great question. Because into the 20th century, women had to fight really hard to be allowed to cover, especially mens sports. Sports some of the areas of sports an politics, hard news, are considered very masculine beats and so women didnt get to cover sports in any kind of notable numbers until the 1970s, after affirmative action policies. And even then, there were lots of issues surrounding access to athletes, locker room interviews, harassment on the job, so i would say that its sports is one of those areas that was sort of the last to kind of become more accepting of women. And it is still a work in progress. Yes. [ inaudible question ]. Based on my own research, do i have sort of a favorite, do have a favorite journalist . I have to say that the person that i that i wrote about, i wrote a biography of Silvia Porter and shes still probably my favorite female journalist to talk about. She started working during the depression. Her father had died. But she was brilliant. She started working during the depression. She wanted to cover finance and she created a real empire. I mean she became a brand. She was read by 40 million people. And what is interesting to me about her is that people dont know who she is now. But at the time, she was as well known as oprah. Martha stewart. She made the tops of the list of the most influential women. But you know, but history is full of interesting people. And certainly some of these women are fascinating as well. [ inaudible question ]. That is a really good question. So did the women meet with the suffrage and write about it and were they involved in the suffrage movement, right . Nelly bly did. She interviewed and wrote a profile of susan b. Anthony, a famous suffragist and they did write profiles of women that were part of the movement. And even if they were supportive of the movement, however, i want to say that these women are different from say emelia bloomer, who was a editor of a womens suffrage newspaper. So these women, the women working at newspapers are not part of the movement, they cover the movement. But there is a separate type of female journalist who is whose journalism served the movement and who is part of it. So you have separate sort of suffrage newspapers and publications that are politically involved and engaged, and so these women who they were supportive, about not necessarily of the movement. Good question. Yes. Do you think there is going to be a type of journalism today that [ inaudible ]. Do you think there will be a journalist that would make someone as famous at nelly bly. That is an interesting question. I wonder if it exists. With social media, it would seem that that something similar could absolutely i could envision it. And you know, this type of reporting now might be called emersion reporting. They have different labels over time, right. And so absolutely. And i think there are a lot of parallels between the upheaval now in the Business Models of journalism and the ways that newspapers develop new Business Models in the 19th century, right. The model of charging for advertising and aiming for high circulation, that may not be panning out for news organizations on the internet so they are going to be developing a different model and who knows what well see after that. So yes. [ inaudible question ]. Good question. Were women at home engaging with this content on a daily basis and reading it and was there any backlash. Absolutely im sure there was backlash. And just women are not home othenous group and just like sarah heal was not supportive of Margaret Fuller or appreciative of her, there were plenty of women who thought nelly bly was a horror, scandalous, right. But as to the question of were people sort of eating the content up, yeah they were. And that really gets to the larger point of what commercialization made possible, which was even if this was inappropriate behavior for a lady, it made money, right. And so this kind of populist form of journalism became a way women could make their way into the industry. Because if they could bring the numbers with them, if they could make a profit for the owners of the newspapers, then who was to stop them, right. So i think ill end there. Thank you all very much. [ applause ] im glad