Sensational The hidden history of America's "girl stunt reporters"

In the mid-nineteenth century, few employment paths were open to women beyond domestic worker, teacher, and sweatshop laborer, and all were anathema to those with independent minds and adventurous spirits. Fortunately, newspapers of the day saw the subscription-bait value of hiring young, intrepid women for so-called stunt assignments, going undercover to expose all-too prevalent cases of human rights abuses, poverty, and political corruption. For women willing, more typically eager, to accept the challenge, the world was as exhilarating as it was dangerous. As the Victorian age inexorably gave way to the very different modern era, women journalists began to emerge from their undercover pretenses to openly write overt works of investigative journalism. In order for today's indefatigable, audacious women (or men, for that matter)--such journalists as Jane Mayer and Barbara Ehrenreich--there first had to be such gutsy "girl" reporters as Nellie Bly and Ida Tarbell. With textured analysis and an instinct for salient details, Todd emulates her pioneering heroines to offer multidimensional examples of the revolutionary contributions women of this era made to journalism.

Todd (Sparrow), a professor of creative writing at the University of Minnesota, offers a spirited survey of the muckraking female journalists of the Gilded Age. In the 1880s and '90s, Todd explains, rival publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer fostered a new, more sensationalistic style of journalism. Women reporters, previously stuck offering tips to homemakers, drew big audiences with daring, first person narratives. Elizabeth Cochrane (1864--1922), who wrote under the pen name Nellie Bly, faked insanity to get committed to a notorious women's asylum in New York City. Her exposé, later published in book form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, led to reforms at the asylum and launched a wave of similar "stunt reporting." Eva McDonald (1866--1956) went undercover to document low pay and unsafe conditions at Minnesota garment factories, and became a leading activist in the labor movement. Ida B. Wells (1862--1931) catalogued the horrors of lynching and advocated for women's suffrage; Victoria Earle Matthews (1861--1907) founded a settlement home to help Black girls from the South find their footing in New York City. Todd casts a sprawling net, rescuing some of her profile subjects from obscurity and adding depth to the popular portrayals of others. This well-researched history makes clear the crucial role female reporters played in pioneering investigate journalism and boosting progressive reform movements. (Apr.)

In this latest book, Todd (Sparrow) focuses on the history of stunt reporting and the remarkable careers of notable women journalists. Todd details several women, such as Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells, who investigated and exposed political corruption and working conditions in factories. While the narrative is engaging throughout, Todd's writing shines when telling the stories of women who are often overlooked, such as Victoria Earle Matthews, born into slavery to an enslaved mother; the author recounts how Matthews became a writer and activist. Consideration is also given to the legacy of author and suffragist Elizabeth Jordan, who reported on the trial of Lizzie Borden. Drawing on a range of primary sources, including newsletter articles and photographs, Todd clearly relays how these varied women were able to spark change, and how they went on to write books or become activists themselves in the early 20th century. VERDICT Todd's comprehensive account rightly sheds light on the many women who changed the face of journalism and helped jump-start the newspaper industry. Her accessible writing draws in readers from the first page.--Rebecca Kluberdanz, Central New York Lib. Resources Council, Syracuse

A history of a group of pioneering investigative journalists. During the 1880s, notes environmental and science writer Todd, "girl stunt reporters" began going undercover to report on corruption and malfeasance in the U.S. Among these female reporters was Nellie Bly, who, in 1887, published the "Inside the Madhouse" series for the World, in which she faked insanity to expose conditions in a mental hospital in New York City. Bly's writing "shook free of the ruffles and hoop skirts of Victorian prose," and her "strong first-person point of view immersed readers in the narrator's experience." Across the country, other women took notice and entered the fray, exposing sweatshops, corrupt politicians, and other abuses of power. However, in 1888, when a young woman known only as "Girl Reporter" faked a pregnancy in order to write a series on abortion physicians for the Chicago Times, some felt she had pushed stunt reporting too far. In addition, "female writers began to wonder if assigning editors had their best interests at heart." Before long, the author contends, stunt reporters fell out of favor, and the term "yellow journalism" became a popular way to describe stories deemed outrageous or sensational. Stunt reporting eventually faded away, but its impact would remain, reflected in the new journalism work of Joan Didion, George Plimpton, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and others. "By writing these reporters back into history," Todd writes, "I aim to highlight the double standard that labels women as 'stunt reporters' while men are 'investigative journalists,' even as they do the same work." The author succeeds in resurrecting the indispensable contributions of Bly and others, weaving together an enjoyable chronicle of a specific element of the history of journalism. Like she did for Maria Sibylla Merian in Chrysalis (2007), Todd celebrates the contributions of her subjects while placing them within the appropriate historical context. An engaging and enlightening portrait of trailblazers who "challenged…views of what a woman should be." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.