Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:13:25.718Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Newspaper Women and the Making of the Modern, 1885—1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Get access

Extract

“Inever shall forget my thrill at the phrase cover it,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Zona Gale wrote of her early newspaper work in New York City from 1901 to 1903: “When I was actually a reporter, I used to go about my work saying to myself, ‘I'm out on an assignment!’ People talked about the newspaper grind. But I was more than happy in it. I was ecstatic.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Derleth, August, Still Small Voice: The Biography of Zona Gale (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1940), 64Google Scholar.

2. On this point see Kelley, Mary, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. On mid-19th-century women's writing see also Baym, Nina, Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels By and About Women in America, 1820–1870 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar.

3. On changes in women's status at the turn of the century see Stansell, Christine, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York: Metropolitan, 2000)Google Scholar; Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985), 245—96Google Scholar; Garvey, Ellen Gruber, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Meyerowitz, Joanne J., Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar. On changing ideas of the “public” in American life, see Ryan, Mary P., Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

4. On Cather's newspaper career, see Woodress, James Leslie, Willa Cather: A Literary Life (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987)Google Scholar. On Gale, see Derleth, Still Small Voice; Simonson, Harold P., Zona Gale (New York: Twayne, 1962)Google Scholar; and Burt, Elizabeth, “Rediscovering Zona Gale, Journalist,” American Journalism 12 (Fall 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Jordan, Elizabeth, Three Rousing Cheers (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1938)Google Scholar; Ferber, Edna, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Garden City, 1938)Google Scholar; and Graham, Jane Kirkland, Viola, the Duchess of New Dorp: A Biography of Viola Roseboro' (Danville: Illinois Printing, 1955)Google Scholar. On newspaper women's careers more generally, see Ross, Ishbel, Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936)Google Scholar; Abramson, Phyllis Leslie, Sob Sister Journalism (New York: Greenwood, 1990)Google Scholar; Schlipp, Madelon Golden and Murphy, Sharon M., Great Women of the Press (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Burt, Elizabeth V., ed., Women's Press Organizations, 1881–1999 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000)Google Scholar; Beasley, Maurine H. and Gibbons, Sheila J., Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Belford, Barbara, Brilliant Bylines: A Biographical Anthology of Notable Newspaperwomen in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Marzolf, Marion, Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (New York: Hastings House, 1977)Google Scholar. For individual newspaper women's experiences, see also Kroeger, Brooke, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (New York: Times, 1994)Google Scholar; Manning, Marie, Ladies Now and Then, by Beatrice Fairfax (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1944)Google Scholar; Ayer, Margaret Hubbard and Taves, Isabella, The Three Lives of Harriet Hubbard Ayer (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1957)Google Scholar; Banks, Elizabeth, The Autobiography of a “Newspaper Girl” (London: Methuen, 1902)Google Scholar; Kelly, Florence Finch, Flowing Stream: The Story of Fifty-six Years in American Newspaper Life (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1939)Google Scholar; and Dorr, Rheta Childe, A Woman of Fifty (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1924)Google Scholar.

5. Jordan, , Three Rousing Cheers, 49, 50Google Scholar.

6. In the antebellum period James Gordon Bennett's Sun published in New York City had also had many sensational features, as Andie Tucher and Patricia Cline Cohen have pointed out. Reporters of the 1890s also noticed a link backward to the famous story papers of the mid-19th century, especially Robert Bonner's Ledger published in New York City. On this point, see Ford, James L., The Literary Shop and Other Tales (New York: Geo. H. Richmond, 1894)Google Scholar. Newspapers of the 1890s were hardly entirely new, in other words. But the newspapers of the 1890s represented a significant expansion — quite literally — of this sensationalist mode, with many more pages of features. See Tucher, Andie, Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America's First Mass Medium (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Cohen, Patricia Cline, The Murder of Helen Jewett (New York: Knopf, 1998)Google Scholar. On the history of American newspapers more generally, see especially Schudson, Michael, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic, 1978)Google Scholar; and Mott, Frank Luther, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 260 Years, 1690–1950 (New York: Macmillan, 1950)Google Scholar. See also Ziff, Larzer, The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation (New York: Viking, 1966), 146–65Google Scholar.

7. On newspaper women's resentment of stunt reporting see, for example, Banks, Autobiography, and Ross, , Ladies of the Press, 92Google Scholar.

8. See Roosevelt, Theodore, The Strenuous Life (New York: Century, 1901)Google Scholar. On the late-19th-century celebration of masculinized experience within popular literary culture, see Wilson, Christopher P., The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995)Google Scholar. For an example of articles discussing the physically “arduous” nature of newspaper work, see The Young Woman in Journalism,” Journalist, 04 11, 1891, 2Google Scholar.

9. O'Hagan, Anne, “Women in Journalism,” Munsey's Magazine 19 (07 1898): 615Google Scholar.

10. Ferber, , Peculiar Treasure, 103Google Scholar.

11. MrsRayne, M. L., What Can a Woman Do; or, Her Position in the Business and Literary World (Detroit: F. B. Dickerson, 1884), 42Google Scholar.

12. Steiner, Linda, Construction of Gender in Newsreporting Textboooks, 1890–1990, Journalism Monographs 135 (10 1992), 7Google Scholar.

13. Beasley, Maurine H. and Gibbons, Sheila J., Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1993), 101Google Scholar.

14. See Journalist, January 26, 1889.

15. A Caustic Critic,” Journalist, 10 3, 1891, 8Google Scholar.

16. Dana, Charles A., The Art of Newspaper Making (1895; rept. New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1970), 94Google Scholar.

17. Hamm, Margherita Arlina, “About Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 11 14, 1891, 12Google Scholar. Foster Coates, managing editor of the New York Mail and Express, commented that “in a long experience I have found as intelligent, as faithful and as painstaking reporters who wore petticoats as among the men” (see Journalist, February 13, 1892, 2).

18. Hill, Joseph A., Women in Gainful Occupations 1870–1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1929), 42Google Scholar.

19. Marken, Edith May, “Women in American Journalism before 1900” (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Missouri, 1932), 5154Google Scholar, as quoted in Beasley, Maurine H. and Gibbons, Sheila J., Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1993), 10Google Scholar.

20. Kelly, , Flowing Stream, 121Google Scholar.

21. J. L. H., , “A Woman's Experience of Newspaper Work,” Harper's Weekly, 01 25, 1890, 7475Google Scholar.

22. Bok, Edward, “Is the Newspaper Office the Place for a Girl?Ladies'Home Journal 18 (02 1901): 18Google Scholar.

23. Humphreys, Mary Gay, “Women Bachelors in New York,” Scribner's Magazine 19 (08 1896): 627Google Scholar.

24. Hamm, Margherita Arlina, “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 01 14, 1893, 11Google Scholar.

25. O'Hagan, , “Women in Journalism,” 611Google Scholar.

26. Ibid.

27. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 11 28, 1891, 10Google Scholar.

28. Dorr, , Woman of Fifty, 72, 74Google Scholar.

29. Ibid., 74, 75.

30. Ibid., 74, 76, 77.

31. Ibid., 77, 91–92, 95.

32. Ibid., 92, 95.

33. O'Hagan, , “Women in Journalism,” 611Google Scholar.

34. Jordan, , Three Rousing Cheers, 14Google Scholar.

35. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 05 28, 1892, 6Google Scholar.

36. Fairfax, [Manning, ], Ladies, 23Google Scholar.

37. On Bly, see especially Kroeger, Nellie Bly.

38. Kroeger, , Nellie Bly, 102Google Scholar.

39. Cather, Willa, The World and the Parish: Willa Cather's Articles and Reviews, 1893–1902, ed. Curtin, William M. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 2: 527–32Google Scholar.

40. Bisland, Elizabeth, “A Flying Trip Around the World,” Cosmopolitan 8 (04 1890): 691700Google Scholar; and Cosmopolitan 9 (05 1890): 5961Google Scholar; (June 1890): 173–84; (July 1890): 273–84; (August 1890): 401–13; (September 1890): 533–45; (October 1890): 666–77.

41. Banks, , Autobiography, 7991, 101, 103Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., 100–101.

43. Ibid., 101.

44. Kroeger, , Nellie Bly, 222, 223Google Scholar.

45. Banks, , Autobiography, 212Google Scholar

46. Ibid., 205.

47. Kelly, , Flowing Stream, 458Google Scholar.

48. Cather, , The World, 531, 528Google Scholar.

49. Manning, , Ladies, 52Google Scholar. Elizabeth Banks also remembered writing a series of stories on “How I Live on Three Dollars a Week” (Autobiography, 262–63)Google Scholar.

50. Dorr, , Woman of Fifty, 103–5Google Scholar.

51. Manning, , Ladies, 3334Google Scholar.

52. Ibid., 34, 33.

53. Ibid., 34.

54. Ibid., 37–38.

55. “I Wonder Why Bill Bailey Don't Come Home,” words by Frank Fogerty and music by Woodward and Jerome, 1902.

56. Dorr, , Woman of Fifty, 9697Google Scholar.

57. Ibid., 101–2.

58. Manning, , Ladies, 157Google Scholar.

59. Ibid., 157–58. On the subject of reporting the activities of women's clubs, Eliza D. Keith remembered that “a clever editor” once said to her, “Any newspaper woman who wants to make a sensation, has only to join some of these women's societies, and when she gets on to all their little idiosyncracies [sic], to write 'em up! Such stuff would make a capital story.” Keith commented, “No doubt, but how about the woman that would do it? The role of Judas is a masculine one!” (A Choice of Subjects,” Journalist, 11 7, 1891, 13Google Scholar).

60. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 12 5, 1891, 12Google Scholar.

61. Manning, , Ladies, 27Google Scholar.

62. Ibid., 61–63.

63. Hapgood, Hutchins, A Victorian in the Modern World (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), 152Google Scholar.

64. Manning, , Ladies, 90, 92, 93Google Scholar.

65. Stansell, American Moderns.

66. Graham, , Viola, the Duchess of New Dorp, 1: 279Google Scholar.

67. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 03 26, 1892, 13Google Scholar.

68. Ibid.

69. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift.

70. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 03 26, 1892, 13Google Scholar.

71. Dorr, , Woman of Fifty, 78, 82Google Scholar.

72. Humphreys, , “Women Bachelors,” 632Google Scholar.

73. Ibid., 632.

74. de Schell, Emilie Ruck, “Is Feminine Bohemianism a Failure?Arena 20 (07 1898), 70Google Scholar.

75. Sothern, Winifred, “The Truth About the Bachelor Girl,” Munsey's Magazine 25 (05 1901), 282Google Scholar. On bachelor apartments for men in the same period, see Snyder, Katherine, “A Paradise of Bachelors: Remodeling Domesticity and Masculinity in the Turn-of-the-Century New York Bachelor Apartment,” Prospects 23 (1998): 247–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76. Sothern, , “The Truth,” 282–83Google Scholar.

77. Ibid., 282.

78. Ford, James L., “Some Pitfalls of Journalism,” Munsey's Magazine 22 (10 1899): 150–51Google Scholar.

79. O'Hagan, , “Women in Journalism,” 611Google Scholar.

80. Sothern, , “The Truth,” 282Google Scholar.

81. Bok, , “Newspaper Office” 18Google Scholar.

82. Sothern, , “The Truth,” 283Google Scholar.

83. Ziff, , American 1890s, 280Google Scholar.

84. O'Hagan, , “Women in Journalism,” 614–15Google Scholar.

85. Ibid., 611, 615, 614. On neurasthenia, see Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981)Google Scholar.

86. Leider, Emily Wortis, California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 145Google Scholar.

87. Keith, Eliza D., “The Young Woman in Journalism,” Journalist, 04 11, 1891, 2Google Scholar.

88. O'Hagan, , “Women in Journalism,” 615Google Scholar.

89. Dorr, , Woman of Fifty, 98Google Scholar.

90. Keith, , “Young Woman,” 2Google Scholar.

91. Cahoon, Haryot Holt, “Women in Gutter Journalism,” Arena 17 (03 1897): 568Google Scholar.

92. Bok, , “Newspaper Office,” 18Google Scholar.

93. Ibid.

94. Cahoon, , “Women in Gutter Journalism,” 568–69Google Scholar.

95. Ibid., 569–70.

96. Ibid., 570–71.

97. Ibid., 572–3.

98. Schell, de, “Feminine Bohemianism,” 7073Google Scholar.

99. Ibid., 74–75.

100. Ibid., 75.

101. Atherton, Gertrude, Patience Sparhawk and Her Times: A Novel (1895; rept. New York: R. F. Fenno, 1903), 307, 345, 323Google Scholar.

102. Ibid., 322.

103. Ibid., 337.

104. Ibid., 338.

105. Jordan, , Three Rousing Cheers, 87Google Scholar.

106. Atherton, Gertrude, Adventures of a Novelist (New York: Liveright, 1932), 222Google Scholar.

107. Jordan, Elizabeth G., Tales of the City Room (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898), 34Google Scholar.

108. Ibid., 74–75.

109. See, for instance, a similar anecdote in Banks, , Autobiography, 4651Google Scholar.

110. Jordan, , Tales, 2021Google Scholar.

111. Ibid., 21–29.

112. Ibid., 23–24.

113. Cather, , The World, 531Google Scholar.

114. Jordan, , Tales, 210–12Google Scholar.

115. Ibid., 213–21.

116. Ibid., 222–29.

117. Ibid., 227–31.

118. Ibid., 223.

119. World (New York), 01 2, 1891, 6Google Scholar; January 31, 1891, 9.

120. Jordan, , Tales, 107–8, 105–6, 117Google Scholar.

121. Keith, , “Young Woman,” 2Google Scholar.

122. Banks, , Autobiography, 310Google Scholar.

123. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 04 2, 1892, 6Google Scholar.

124. Keith, , “Choice of Subjects,” 13Google Scholar.

125. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 03 5, 1892, 2Google Scholar.

126. Jordan, Three Rousing Cheers.

127. Ibid., 37, 36.

128. Jordan, , Tales, 109, 110Google Scholar.

129. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 04 2, 1892, 6Google Scholar.

130. Hamm, , “Among the Newspaper Women,” Journalist, 05 28, 1892, 6Google Scholar.

131. Michelson, Miriam, A Yellow Journalist (New York: D. Appleton, 1905), 9Google Scholar.

132. Ibid., 259.

133. Ibid., 162.

134. Ibid., 173.

135. Ferber, , Peculiar Treasure, 115Google Scholar.

136. Ross, , Ladies of the Press, 205Google Scholar.