One of rights that considerably altered the course of American history is the freedom of the press. The media has had a vast array of impacts, some are more beneficial than others, but there have been many cases of positive change and awareness being brought about by journalism. One of the most noticeable examples of this is Nellie Bly, whose investigative reporting captured American readers and raised awareness about multiple social issues.
Bly was born in 1864 as Elizabeth Cochran in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania. She had 14 siblings, but her father died when she was only six, leading her mother to remarry and soon divorce due to the abusive nature of the relationship.
The family relocated to Pittsburgh, where she went to school and was excelling in her studies until money ran out and she moved back home to support her mother. In 1885, Elizabeth read an incredibly sexist article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, leading her to write an angry letter to the editor. The editor and the paper’s readers were enamored by her writing, leading the editor to offer her a job as a columnist. It was then that she took on the pen name Nellie Bly. She positioned herself as an investigative reporter, where she went undercover at a factory where she wrote about unsafe conditions, low wages and long hours. Elizabeth’s boss didn’t want to anger Pittsburgh’s elite, she was reassigned to be a society columnist.
Unsatisfied with her new position, Bly worked in Mexico for 6 months, but she was disappointed that she was still only a women’s society columnist upon her return. Bly quit her job in Pittsburgh and moved to New York, where she was turned down by many papers because she was a woman. She was finally hired by Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper. Bly started boldly: she pretended to be mentally ill, securing a spot at New York’s insane asylum called Blackwell’s Island, where she experienced any abuses that patients often have to suffer. The conditions were notoriously poor and cruel, but Bly took her job seriously in hopes of raising awareness. She was there for ten days, and published a book and articles recording her experience, eventually leading to New York to allocate funding to improve conditions at such institutions. Although her asylum articles were the most groundbreaking, her other investigations include uncovering abuse of women by male police officers, identifying an unemployment agency that was stealing from immigrants, exposing corrupt politicians and beat the record for the fastest trip around the world. She wanted to prove that a woman would be able to beat the record, leading her to travel around the world in 72 days and gaining even more fame for her work.
Elizabeth retired from writing and married an older millionaire, who died nine years later and left Bly to run his companies. She was an effective administrator, but the companies collapsed due to accountants embezzling money. As a result, Elizabeth returned to journalism, where she reported numerous national news stories, including coverage on the suffrage movement, even covering the Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913 in D.C. She even traveled to Europe to report on World War from the trenches and on the front line. She continued to be a celebrity level reporter until she died of pneumonia in 1922. Bly lives on as a trailblazer for investigative journalism, she brought a variety of injustices to light when few others were willing to.
Sources
https://wams.nyhistory.org/modernizing-america/modern-womanhood/nellie-bly/
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/nellie-bly
Images
https://www.abc.net.au/classic/programs/music-in-time/music-in-time-nellie-bly/11503674
Hey Grace! I really liked this post! I feel like it really appealed to my views as a feminist, especially because it showed the resilience, dedication, determination, and success a woman can have in a line of work, especially in such a society as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I found it interesting that so many people loved her work, as many women, despite their work being amazing, did not receive sufficient credit.
Hi Grace! Nellie Bly’s story is amazing and I was captivated by what you wrote here. I love to hear about anything that has to do with feminism and reading her story was inspiring. I loved how resilient she was and her success is astounding considering her gender and the time in which she was alive.
This is such an inspiring story! It is amazing to learn about how groundbreaking her journalistic work was especially as a woman in that time who had to face sexism in addition to the controversy of her investigative journalism.