guide or visit booktv.org for more information. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. for complete television schedule visit booktv.org, you can follow along behind the scenes on social media booktv, twitter, instagram and facebook. >> without further ado i'm delighted to introduce to discuss her book sensational, kim will be in conversation with stephanie. kim, hi kim. >> hello. >> hi stephanie, those of you that don't know kim's book sensational and hidden history of america's reporters was released yesterday, happy publishing day and it highlights the undercover journalist to expose at the heart of the gilded age, earlier books

include marion in the secrets of metamorphic menace and tinkering with eden. stephanie gorton is the author of the book of citizen reporters, she has written for numerous online publications including new yorker.com, the paris view daily in the los angeles review books, she lives in providence and i will also have her book for those of you that are interested, kim and stephanie will speak to 20 to 30 minutes and we will open it up to the audience questions submitted to the q&a question. i will turn over to them. >> thank you stephanie in thank you to the bookstore, it is such a pleasure to do this, i welcome the chance to travel back in time of the gilded age and

celebrate the publication of this book, congratulations kim. >> thank you very much. >> it's exciting to have in the world. >> i'm sure it's been a long time coming and now the world is starting to open up again it kind of seems like the perfect time and thank you to everyone who is attending also. maybe we can get this conversation started by focusing on beginnings, would you tell us how that reporting got a start? >> it really got a start of this era it is publicly and she is a young woman in western pennsylvania the nagel her way into a job at dispatch without a lot of experience but that did not hold her back in, she was very ambitious and more than a

year she really said new york is a place to be i'm going to go to new york and work for the best papers in the country. she spent long months trying to find a job, it was very competitive, everybody wanted to work for the same paper she wanted to work for and women were not in high demand because the utility as a reporter was very limited. but she got her first assignment by volunteering to get to black world by women and she spent ten days and came out with an explosive expose about the horrible way that women were being treated in the fact that many of them weren't until he ill, they were just poor are immigrants that didn't know english or immigrants their family wanted to get rid of. on the one hand it was a valuable piece of journalism and

on the other hand she told us a very personal and pursue rater and she used a lot of dialogue and the carriers that she created were sympathetic and her voice is very funny, she used a lot of simple sentences, sensory detail and a lot of papers. so right after that, in a year all of these newspapers all of a sudden wanted to hire young women similar to nelly and it was a casting opened the door of opportunity which a lot of women were able to walk through. >> that is really fascinating, we touched on the fact from western pennsylvania with one of the subjects of my book also came from there and made her way to new york but worked in

magazines in investigative journalism rather as an undercover newspaper reporter. it must've taken such got to do what nelly did and it seems really reserved that she made her reputation pretty quickly and inaugurated a new genre, what really struck me about your book is incredibly vivid people, you don't learn about history class or even journalism school even if you're interested in the gilded age they don't seem to come up but there's a source for the stories that we think of and questioning authority beyond

nelly was a recognizable name, would you tell us a little bit more about the other women that you wrote about. >> sure, i would like to highlight how it was to read your book because it told a lot of the same events and describe the same decade but from the magazine side as opposed to then sensational newspaper side and it was really great to have that open perspective. i was also reading about another interesting journalist from one western pennsylvania, yet part of the fun of the book was undercover, woman after woman who had an interesting life and did amazing work, one of the people who really got me into the story was a character who never became linked with an identity, she was known as the girl to chicago times, with a little over a year in december

of 1888 she went undercover to doctors offices throughout chicago and asked for an abortion and she said she went to 200 doctors and she printed a series of article after article in the chicago times with what she found and she found abortion was asking and this was surprising because it was illegal at the time and it was extensively and on the editorial page condemned mentor he and more realistic but at the same time she talked about techniques that the doctors viewed in medication that she was offered in really in education to leaders of the chicago times in terms of the availability and different kinds of abortion, we

really went into her story and she disappeared right after the end of the series, part of the efforts in the book was to figure out who she was, another reporter who also works in the chicago times, she went into factories where women worked and the conditions there, child labor, sexual harassment, really unclean conditions in working for pennies and went on to work for the new york world as many of these reporters. one more woman that i mentioned he wasn't working as a start reporter tradition was victoria

matthews, she was an african-american reporter and she got her start as a lot of the other women did household hints and things you might find a woman's page but became more and more of an activist over the course of her work until within a decade she came from the south and the employment agencies that morphed into the north and offer them jobs and started a settlement house to help them find work and give them an education and help take care of her kids in some cases. >> it striking the way that you put this book together and you started with the writer is never been tied to identity, just a girl reporter and then belly is

more famous, and these other women were needing unglamorous and on famous lives as they did their work, something that is a history of ordinary people challenging to write i imagine you had to draw from a lot of primary sources, nobody's written a book like this before, can you tell us about that research process, i found myself very curious. >> yeah, it was interesting because the previous women was an artist and a naturalist so is very scant and materials that i can go to, they were all writers and a ton of writing but what are the questions of the book is how much is a persona that they presented in the writing and a

lot of times they are using and i in creating an interesting character on the page, how much of that reflection of who they actually were and i tried to use the writing and lighted up in the journals that they had in the letters that they had, in some cases there was a lot, one of the reporters who was working in the tradition, those wonderful truths of her material at the minnesota history center, there's letters of her where she talks frankly, don't mention my dear friend, they were very ambitious and a transcript of an oral picture that she did and other women there's hardly anything, he was a really

wonderful wider and exposed important things, helped establish laws and sectors, there is really no beyond her writing that was published in the papers just a mysterious girl reporter. my favorite that i came upon is this scrapbook which someone put together in 1898 and the person who put it together, a lot of the women came together in 1898 in new bedford massachusetts, pretty much all of the reporters in new york are not there to cover in one way or another and this person was editor of the local massachusetts paper and he hated all of these women writing what he thought yellow journalism, trashy terrible stories and is good articles

about their coverage of the textile strike and various jokes about how horrible female reporters are in is really valuable because a lot of these papers are digitized to access them and search for the writer's name but a whole bunch are really important the art like the chicago times, the new york journal which hired a lot of the reporters it's great to have the crumbling papers that don't exist much of anywhere else, altogether of this particular editor. that was great to see.

>> the happening new bedford which is very close to where i am in another story that came up, elizabeth jordan both covered in fall river. this period of time was one were gender dynamics were changing rapidly and not all that rapidly, when i was researching or reading through a paper, there was amazing a number of letters that someone had written dear sir, and had to cross out the sir, and write madame because that was the muscle memory if you are doing something professional or journalism, it was the exception and not the rule.

there were strict victorian norms that were being called into question entering the workplace, probably the characters in the figures of sensational is in that process, how do you see the interplay and how was it changing then and whether it happen fast enough to be of advantage to the women of this book. >> this particular genre embrace the fact that they were women and use that to their advantage. unlike a lot of the novel is that you think of a 19th century, george elliott, these

women, we see nelly talking about her vanity in her hair and how handsome on the doctors and it was hard to be mentally ill in front of him. . . . because she was a woman. with the chicago times, says it very overtly in reporting. she said did i imagine i would start my reporting life on an assignment like this? no. but a man could never done it,

that is true. a man would not have gotten that same response for the chicago trip started out in the muller porter sink roi have a sister who is in trouble. and all of the doctors and their wives went to see the actual woman in question before they would give any advice. i think the downside of them, both of those things made that desirable. people really want to read it. he was talking about things it'd not been talked about before and this very deliberately charming way. but the downside was they were not taken seriously then. and they do not present themselves particularly serious. they are not taken particular serious now. i think that was one of my tasks, what happens to take them seriously.

>> host: just a follow from that, how far were these outliers from the conventional course their lives would've otherwise taken? >> you think about always hard to tell what the conventional course is. we have articles talking about articles in question. certainly these women did not write for the most respectable paper. the times, the most, we do not really hire women for anything but the society pages. so it takes, sometimes women

have an easier time in the west. it's really should pricing how many of these women came from there tend to hire they were the trash your papers. i want to at the circulation going to do whatever it takes to do the outcome for bassem not respectable going to win. that was part of a strategy to do that. we went that so fascinating to get the census is writing about magazines is very segregated world there were the women's magazines in these

genteel contributors who set at home and wrote columns about housekeeping and answering advice queries. and then you have the magazines that men would read on their commute to the office. there are two different worlds. gradually the gilded age the general interest magazine become much more popular to watch it vanish the country was settled there all of these literate people who wanted to know what was going on for they wanted to read about the society around them. once entering seeing to hear how women could infiltrate certain papers. but definitely not all of them. there was that elitism and the newspaper world.

once the characters in break-in, what did you find were in their careers? were there any who ended up leaving journalism? could you talk is through lifelong or career long path? >> yes. think the obstacles were warm. think particular early on. once the paper hired one woman to like we've got our woman. we do not need anymore. but i think at least four the stott reporters of what i'm talking about, white relatively young women. it seems i don't think of

something that resonates today but this notion of respectability. they wanted to write something interesting. they wanted to do these things which were physically risky. they had to stay on the respectable side of the line. particularly as a journalist respectability was tied to credibility. once you sell out of the fear of respectable womanhood, you just were not considered to be a credible voice on anything. so i think balancing that line was tough for a lot of women. the most respectable work paid more and sometimes was physically dangerous. and later on you have women saying i did not really want to do that kind of work anymore. but it sure paid a lot better. and my other option for these

women's pages which is not going to be -- help me support my poor mother. think that was a big hurdle. also financial hardship. among this cohort of women, it is interesting there always unique at all quite similar demographically. there board during or right after the civil war. there's a lot of orphans are a lot of people who did not have any father figure in their life who'd be there to take care of them or support them financially. that hurdle was always they had to make some money. that was always the driving factor for a lot of them. as well as leading interesting and meaningful life. directly did not talk about

identity wells. you tweeted earlier today about if you've ever confused guided tour bell with ida b wells that definitely happens when i tell people i've written a book that's focus still often start talking about ida b wells. your book relate to me reveals a new side of her. even including her in the cohort the different angle. if you would not mind talking a little bit about your research on ida b wells, and how she fits in to the book? >> clearly such a fascinating and brave it inspirational character. i tried to be very clear in the book that she and victoria

earl matthews were not released on reporters. they were really there white women of these hugely popular papers of the time. mike world than your journal. they were much for ida b wells owned her own press at one time purchase self published a lot of books. what i think smart moving moments of the book matthews in this cohort of women in new york in 1892 raised money to fund the publications first book. after she's driven out of memphis where she lives because of the nature of her lynching reporting. >> want to look at them not as reporters but women who really lived the heart of their lives at the same time as these reporters and were making

different innovations in investigative journalism. but literally at the same time. and it was interesting to see, there also pretty much the same age. it was interesting to see how similar societal factors were, working on that. there was one moment the realization i had, ida b wells all get married within a few months of each other. in the summer of 1895. surely speculation on my part, i do think it has something to do with the age they are reaching. they are all in the early 30s and this massive crash of 1893 was there still being felt at that time. and there's the question of, is this conventional path more

open to me? should i take it now? if i have the opportunity. >> that is so interesting. so much of how you're describing journalism than could apply to today. the legacy of the reporters. how they made their way into newspaper journalism. where could we find there legacy today? i think it's a multifaceted. i think ecd legacy in see their legacy and journalism. i think you see it some what

in memoir for your creating the strong first-person narrator to tell a story in which the narrator's life is very controlled. i also think you see their legacy in just the character of the girl reporter. which might be the thing that lasted longest. i think on people say there's lois lane, herrick, pictures of the american girl dolls. really inspired a whole lot of the notion's curious creation. the legacy of the era those

still exists. on the coded as other things of the style section or the collection of articles which were going to put together with special interest to women. i really think that it's an unfortunate leg that we still see from that early time the ages were pioneered. there is a politician she should not be the style pages where she often is. she should be on the front page. on women's health, it is concerned everybody. many op-ed. [laughter] >> it so interesting to hear her say that. and to really think about how the format of newspapers and magazines has remained the

same, the world has changed the world has been reported. that's really interesting. going back to researching reporters there were all of these causes and topics as coc had with being a woman that ida tarbell consciously shoved away from her. and refused to talk about including suffrage. she did not support the right of women to vote because she did not want to be a figurehead for that cause, which is obviously a gender cause. she just wanted to be an investigative journalist. not a woman journalist just to do this type of work. and i think i'm going to be noticing that much more sharply now that women's journalism and journalism are

sadly i know see time is ticking, people have questions first time to open it up to the audience. >> yes. that's a good plan. i really enjoyed this conversation. i feel like this is ready to made into a tv series or movie or something. this would be an excellent series i feel like. do you notice if any of these women's lives have been turned into television or anything for tv? >> is been multiple different versions of the nellie bly story. spent a lot of nonfiction.

i could see this as a podcast series also. [laughter] i am curious to for the women that were married, did they have any idea or knowledge of what their husbands thought of their work? were they supportive? all the pretty stories were individuals. think about the three we mentioned very rich very old man. kind of thinking she was going to retire from reporting. within a year things are to go sour between them. she was back reporting i think as a way to make her own income or certain independence. she returned to reporting throughout her life. to do various things and break away from it. she kept coming back and back and back ended up reporting on

world war one among other things. nelson disappeared the minute she got married. she got a beautiful house in new jersey, had two daughters, i don't know they have her things of which to use and things like that. she married a pulitzer, pulitzer sort of right hand man actually within he remained very involved at a very high level in the newspaper business. she was not doing any writing herself. and wells, despite having four children i think started editing the newspaper like the day after her wedding pretty much. [laughter] she went in and out of doing journalism. but also the pretense she was going to leave it behind.

but then to think about other women i can think off my head of women who married very young and the like their careers really took off and overshadowed their husband where they were always away. so report a lot of failed marriages. i see we have a question in the q&a button. stephanie do and to ask about one, think it's from maya? >> yes maya said the coffee is so sensational excited to read it. can you talk a bit about the relationship between girl reporters with a friends, rivals? at the hangout together? >> that is a great question. as i already mentioned, tori had been hugely supportive of frost. in her life. i would say of all the people i looked at into building a

community of women. she organized for wells she organized these young women who were moving north from the south. >> so there is a number of women were there at the same time. he prospectively get on them is through the eyes of elizabeth jordan who was a reported there and then went on to become an editor and then eventually it harbors book. her book was interesting she was a one that a lot of reporting. but at the height of the plays i was 1986 she was at the hiring step reporters and really framing what that page is going to look like. and she talks about sort of coming in all excited, in 1890

when she started there and looking at the legends of mount nelson and she did not interact with them very much, they were these famous figures passing in the halls. but eventually the world did hire quite a number of women these wonderful pictures of jordan and his other female reporters of the world. one is holding a kitten fighting messy desk. get quite a bit of calm lottery among them. because a good question is kind of wedding that myself too. whether any stories that did not make the cut? >> that is a good question. i've been so deep in the final draft. so there's one reporter named eta patterson did some

reporting and denver. definitely something there people who get a passing mention who certainly could be fleshed out more. the do this all over the country. once i had my hand thought did not get too involved anywhere else. that's one of the discoveries of the book wasn't five women doing its many, many papers from coast-to-coast spew and what you want people to take away from this book from these women's stories? i know you mentioned earlier some of those things that have stayed with us over time.

is it a positive thing, how women are thrown into fashion or will have a lot of assumptions about what women read and women politicians where they might appear in a magazine. what else is there to kind of help people take from this? >> guest: do i have enough fingers on my hands? [laughter] the contributions values women made both to investigative journalism into what we think of is creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction for this whole section in the book talk about how people usually talk about the genesis of creative nonfiction. i don't really feel these women started a lot of things is what we think of creative nonfiction today.

that is one. two is stephanie was talk about this a little bit. just the way that like there are so many. and it's not like in history beget nellie blythe and ida b wells. women are always wanting to live interesting lives no matter what time for you check in then i think to question the way we value women's worth. i think the reason these reporters were forgotten as they were writing in a dominated genre about women. i still think these are health and lighter esteem. rate.

i know your book just came out pretty almost hit the tate to ask this question. i'm curious if there's anything floating around in your head right now about what you might work on next? or a new direction? >> guest: the girl reporter was, i got a certain distance along that path. [inaudible] they really need an appendix in the paperback. sue and oh that's fun. that is so tantalizing. i'm going back for minute i'm curious i first came across these women, chicken across them in school? later on? how did you hear? >> guest: with the work of nellie brave it was very engaging as i mentioned.

i also heard of the reporter through the book by lexi reagan. that kind of put those two stories together. and then there's also wonderful book called frontpage girl. which talks about start reporting as a genre. the combination of those three books, i was like oh this is not one person doing these kind of things it's a decade doing these kinds of things. stu and that might be some good future reading to do after this one. were almost out of time for doubt was like to end with a question i will ask for both of you too, what are both of you reading right now? what's on your nightstand?

[laughter] right up until this morning. it was really wonderful i cannot stress that enough how much i enjoyed learning about clara bell and her journey. again it doesn't seem the same lessees women but so dramatically different. >> i keep wishing this is happened by wish i could read yours will i was researching the book. i think that would have been huge and so fun. i have been on a fiction reading streak. i'm just finishing a novel called the glass hotel. >> that is been a popular one. >> excellent this is been fun. looking for to finishing the book myself i have a few people that are in the journalism and reporting world i plan on gifting this book two. i did sensational emphasis in purchasing them.

thank you both so much this is been a great event. thank you for having me. >> of course, thanks everybody have a great night. ♪ ♪ >> ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ vectors a look at books been publishers weekly democratic senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts combines personal stories with a call to political action and persist. republican center josh hawley of missouri argues big tech

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