The Influences of Nellie Bly on Journalism
The field of mass media and journalism was built by the people to spread news across the globe in hopes of having a broader idea of government, conflicts and life as a whole. Since 59 B.C. when the first newspaper, Acta Diurna, was published in Rome, the field has been dominated by males. Men were considered to be fit for reporting because they were allowed to have an education and through social standards, seen as the only dominating factor when broached with an important decision or for an expert opinion on any topic. After equality within education started effecting the social norms, women began to branch out of the standards they were previously hindered by to become more forceful in competition with jobs, pay and intelligence. Through these changes, pushed along by war and protests, various areas of the work force slowly began to integrate women as part of their company communities. The field of mass media has been changed drastically through incorporating women, such as Nellie Bly, into the communications field and using their perspectives to get new angles for stories and in turn, improving investigative journalism and societal normalities.
Elizabeth Jane Cochran, better known by her pen name, Nellie Bly, was the inventor of investigative reporting, according to The National Women’s History Museum. Investigative journalism was such a big step for the mass media because it gave the “potential to present new realities and shatter old paradigms” (Parry, Robert). During the mid to late 1800s, humanitarian problems such as the treatment of the mentally ill, government regulations of corporations and the lack of equality between genders were never fully covered by the news due to the...
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... investigative pieces about sweatshops, jails and bribery
(The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica.) The significance of her reporting skills has changed many things about our society when it comes to human rights in the work place, treatment of patients with disabilities and the empowerment of the adverse people to feel like they can make a difference in the surrounding community, to not only better their lives but to better the lives of their neighbors and the future generations.
Soon after Bly started getting recognition for her work there was a social acceptance of women being able to approach investigative journalism in an intrusive way that men were previously unable to do. The expectations of women not being active in society beyond housekeeping and childbearing was the thought process that allowed Bly to go undercover to find out the hard truth of a story
Kaufman, Debra R. and Richardson, Barbara L. Achievement and Women, Challenging the Assumptions: The Free Press, New York 1982
Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. Painting and photography were her first early interests. She lived in Jackson with her two brothers, Edward and Walter, and her two parents. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father an insurance executive. Welty’s father was from Ohio and her mother from West Virginia. Welty lived in her childhood home for most of her life. Leaving for two years to attend the Mississippi State College for Women. After she spent several years at the University of Wisconsin and a year in New York City. While in New York City, Welty studied advertising at the Columbia University business school. The death of her father brought Welty back home for a while.
While attending the institution Laura composed essays and poetry on subjects such as religion, politics, nature and her own deafness. For her class graduation Laura wrote a farewell poem and gave a speech at commencement which was both published in the American Annals of the Deaf. Her first professional work was done for a church in St. Louis. Her work impressed the editors at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch so much that they hired her. When the Civil War began the newspaper sent her to Washington D.C as its war correspondent. To avoid offending other readers who thought that journalism was “man’s work,” all of her writing was published under the name Howard Glyndon. But it was not very effective. It was largely known that Howard Glyndon was a woman and it was accepted.
In 1945, Flannery O’Connor transferred to the University of Iowa after receiving a scholarship for journalism. After a few months, she realized journalism was not her dream. She talked t...
In “Reporting the News” by George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, the main idea is how the media determines what to air, where to get said stories that will air, how the media presents the news, and the medias effect on the general public. “Reporting The News” is a very strong and detailed article. The authors’ purpose is to inform the readers of what goes on in the news media. This can be inferred by the authors’ tone. The authors’ overall tone is critical of the topics that are covered. The tone can be determined by the authors’ strong use of transitions, specific examples, and phrases or words that indicate analysis. To summarize, first, the authors’ indicate that the media chooses its stories that will air
‘“Now it’s my turn to make it better for generations that come after, which is why I’ve become, involved in disabilities issues”’ (Open University, 2016a).
Pesta, Abigail. "Men Rule Media Coverage of Women’s News." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 31 May 2012. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents her content in a journalistic style. The point of view is in first
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of women, it purposely sets out to redefine women and the qualities by which they should define themselves. The contradictory messages received by women leave women not only in a love/hate relationship with the media, but also in a love/hate relationship with themselves.
With a devastatingly crucial issue such as women being shunned by the media, it’s not okay to have the ideas of other people in your work. In the article, “Controversial Hillary Cover of Time Illuminates Sexism in the Media” by Marianne Schnall, implies that the media is negatively affecting the chances of women becoming successful with all the sexism it is portraying. Marianne Schnall is a published writer and professional interviewer with many influential credentials that she is not afraid to use. In addition, this article's overall effectiveness was not what I was expecting. The article was overwhelming because of all the people she mentioned and then she tried elaborating what they all said after each interview!
When the story of a kidnapped boy broke out on May 23, 1924 the mass media immediately began to develop a story about the crime. Journalists were major contributors to the solving of the crime. Two journalists, James Mulroy and Alvin Goldstein, won the Pulitzer Prize for their contributions. The journalists were the bases of public knowledge for the case and therefore had lots of power in influencing the public’s opinion. However because of this, journalist often crossed the line between fact and fiction. They used total coverage of this case—something they had never done before—and created a case with social interpretation and sensationalism. Any information they could get, t...
Eudora Welty was born in 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, grew up in a prosperous home with her two younger brothers. Her parent was an Ohio-born insurance man and a strong-minded West Virginian schoolteacher, who settled in Jackson in 1904 after their marriage. Eudora’s school life began attending a white-only school. As born and brought up under strict supervision and influence, at the age of sixteen she somehow convinced her parents to attend college far enough from home, to Columbus, Mississippi and then to Madison, Wisconsin. After graduation in 1930, she moved to New York to attend Columbia Business School. While living in New York, Harlem Jazz theatre occupied her more than her class did. She returned to Jackson in 1931 following her father’s untimely death, where she worked for a local radio station and also wrote articles for a newspaper. Later she worked as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration in 1935. As a part of her job she traveled by car or by bus through the depth of Mississippi, and saw poverty of black and white people, which she had never imagined before. This time photography became her passion. She was somehow influenced by black and Southern culture as seen in her novel or short story called “Some Notes on River Country” or “A Worn Path”.
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...
women are seen in the world. There are many different facets of the media such as magazines,