♪ >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> without further ado i'm delighted to introduce to discuss her book sensational. she will be in conversation tonight with stephanie gorton. so high, kim. >> hello. and high, stephanie. for those of you who don't know, kim todd spoke "sensational: the hidden history of america's 'girl stunt reporters'" was released yesterday so happyme publishing day. it highlights the mill

undercover journalist who expose the heart of the gilded age. early books include chrysalis, maria, mary and the secrets of metamorphosis, and tinkering with eden. stephanie gorton is the author of a book called citizen reporters. is written for online publications including new yorker.com, the paris review daily and the los angeles review of books.ks she currently lives in providence and i will also be linking her book as well for those of you are interested. kim and staff equity speak for about 20-30 minutes and then we'll opened up to the audience questions that have been submitted to the q&a button. i will go u head and turned over to them. >> thank you, stephanie. and thank you to the bookstore. this is such a pleasure to do

this. i welcome the chance travel back in time to the gilded age and celebrate the publication of this book. congratulations, kim. >> thanks very much. it's exciting to have it out in the world. >> i'm sure it's been a long time coming and now that the world is starting to open up again it kind of seems like the perfect time. thank you to everyone who's attendingg also. maybe we can get this conversation started by focusing on beginnings. would you tell us a little something about how stuck reporting got its start? >> -- stunt reporting. >> it really got its start with nellie bly who people afford about any reporter of this era is probably nellie bly, and she as a young woman in western pennsylvania finagled her way into a job at the pittsburgh dispatch without a lot of experience but that didn't hold

her back. she was very ambitious and slightly more than a year she already had like new york is e place to be, i'm going to go to new york and work for the best papers in the country. she spent long months they are trying to find a job. it was very competitive. everybody wanted to work for the same papers she wanted to work for and women were not in high demand because it was like the utility as reporter was seen as very limited. but she got her first assignment and are in at the world by volunteering to get herself committed to the same asylum for them. she cannot with an explosive exposé about the horrible way that women were being treated and the fact many of them were not even mentally ill. they just needed to be poor or immigrants with progressive

english women that families wanted to get rid of. so on the one hand, it was this really valuable piece of investigative journalism and on the other hand, she told it in this way that was really irresistible reading. she had this very first person narrator and she is a lot of scenes and a lot of dialogue and the characters she could were sympathetic and her voice was very funny she is a lot of simple sentenceses in detail ana sold a lot of papers. right after that like within a year all of these newspapers all of a sudden wanted to hire young women to do stunts similar to ours and is just like casting open the d door of opportunity which a lot of women were able to walk through. >> that's really fascinating and i think you touched on the fact nellie bly is some western pennsylvania where one of the

main subjects of my book ida tarbell also came from there, from titusville and made a way to new york but worked in magazines in investigative journalism rather than as an undercover newspaper reporter. it must have taken such guts to do what nellie bly did. seems really concerned that she made her reputation pretty quickly and and inaugurated this newan genre. what struck me about your book is there are these incredibly vivid people. you don't learn about in history class or even if you've been in journalism school, even if you're interested in the gilded age they don't seem to come up but there is a source for so many of the stories that we think of as being part of this like era of reform and

questioning authority. beyond nellie bly who i think is a pretty recognizable name, would you tell us a little more about some of the other women you wrotee about? >> sure. i would just like t to highlight how passing was to read your book after finishing writing "sensational" because it told a lot of the same events and described a lot of the same decades but from the magazine site as opposed to the sensational newspaper side. it wasna great to have that perspective. as was reading about shockingly another interesting journalist from western pennsylvania who was definitely and the water there. part of the fun of this book was under covering, like woman after women with such an interesting life and did such amazing work. one of the people who got me into the story was this character who never became linked with an identity. she was just on as like the girl

reporter of the chicago times. within a year or just 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. what she found was abortion was there for the asking. this was surprising because it was illegal at a the time. the series was ostensibly about how terrible this was and on the editorial page it was condemnatory and moralistic but at the same time she talked about techniques the doctors used. she talked about medication she was offered and what dosage she was offered o and really it was

quite deep education to the leader of the chicago times in terms of the availability and different kinds of abortion that one could get. i wasn really drawn into her story and she disappeared right after the ender of the series. part of the everton a book is to see if i could figure out who she was. another reporter who also worked for the chicago times was helen cusack who went by the pseudonym nell nelson and she went into factories where women worked and reported on the conditions there. child labor, sexual harassment really unclean conditions and long hours that these women were working on for pennies. her story was so successful she also lived the dream and went on to work for the new york world as was w a goal of many of these reporters. just one more womanhood like to

mention the was a working is a stub reported tradition but was victoria earl massey matf african-american reporter and she got her start as a lot of these other women did sort of writing helpful hints and think you might find on the women's page. it became more and more of an activist over the course of the work until within a decade she was writing about, human trafficking from the south, fake employment agencies which took women to the north and offer them jobs but really basically held in indentured servitude and started a settlement house to help them find work and give them an education and help take care of their kids in some case cases. >> what really is striking, the we put this book together and you started with the woman who

was a writer to have been tied to one identity, just a girl reporter.d and then nellie bly more famous within many of these other women were really leading unglamorous and i'm famous lives as they did their work -- i'm famous -- that's the kind of history, the history of ordinary people i think is reallyar challenging to write because i imagine you had to draw from a lot of primary sources. nobody has written a book like this before. could you tell us about that research process? i found myself very curious about it. >> yeah, yeah. it was interesting because a previous woman i've written a t blog about was mostly an artist at a naturalist and submit very scant written materials that i could go to. these women were all writers so there was a time of writing, but

one of the questions of the book is like how much is the persona they presented in the writing, a lot of times there using, crating creating visually interesting character on the page,re how muh was a really a reflection of who they actually were? i tried to use the writing and then lined it up with any journals they had any letters that they had. in some cases there was a lot. one of the reporters named eva mcdonald who was working as a tradition of nell nelson doing factory reporting, there's wonderful truth of her material at minnesota history center. there is letters of hers where she talks frankly about don't mention how ambitious i am but i will tell to you, my dear friend. well, anyone would know. they were very ambitious. a a transcript of an oral histoy

that she did and for other women there's hardly anything. nell nelson was a wonderful writer, exposed a loter of important things, helped establish laws, get female factory inspectors. there's really no material beyond her writing that was published in the papers. same for this mysterious girl reporter. one of my favorite sources that i came upon is this scrapbook which someone put together in 1898 and the person who put it together, a lot of these women came together in 1898 at this textile strike in new bedford massachusetts. pretty much all female reporters in new york were there to cover in one way or another. 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 >> do i have enough fingers on my hands? one is just the contribution values these women they both to investigative journalism and to what we think of as creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction. there's a whole section of how talk about t how people talk abt the genesis off creative nonfiction and it is man's man's

man and i really feel like these women started a lot of the things which are part of what we think of as creative nonfiction today. that's one. two is, stephanie was talking about this but just the way there were so many. there were so many and it's not like in history we get nellie bly and ida b. wells and ida tarbell doing interesting things. women are always wanting to live interesting lives and being treated as full human beings. but no matter what time period you check in, it's interesting to look at all of these individuals. i think three, i think that the reason these reporters were forgotten is they wereea ridingn a female dominated genre about women and i still think we hold that work in lighter esteem than we do either writing about men

are writing by men. >> right. i know your book just came out. i almost hesitate to ask this question but i'm curious if there's anything floating around in your head right now about what youbo might work on next, r a new direction? >> one of the girls, i got a certain distance along that path and actually i have some new leads. >> cool. >> i really n need an appendix n the paperback saw think i will poke around on that a little bit. >> that's fun. >> that's sooe tantalizing. >> just going back a minute i'm curious how you first came across these women. did you come across them in school or later on? how did you first hear about some of these women?

>> so reading the work of nellie bly and it was very engaging as i mentioned, and then i also heard of the girl reporter through a book by leslie reagan called when abortion was a crime. that kind of put those stories together and there's also a wonderful book called frontpage girls which talks about stunt reporting as a genre and it was the combination of those three books where i really realized like this wasn't like one person doing these kinds of things. this was a decade of doing these kinds of things. >> that might be some good future reading after this one. we are almost out of time but ii always like to into with the question and to ask this for both of a you. what are both of you reading right now? what's on your nightstand?

>> well, i just finished stephanie is book. right up until this morning. >> really wonderful. i can't stress that enough how much i enjoyed learning about ida tarbell and a journey which was again somewhat the same as his one buzzard medically different. >> i wish i'd been able to read yours while i was researching my book. that would've been huge and so fun. i have been on a fiction reading street so just finishing a novel called the class hotel. >> that's been a popular one. >> excellent. this has been really fun. i'm looking forward to finishing the book myself and i have a few people i am friends with that are in then journalism and reporting world that i plan on gifting this book too. i did just pop links to both

"sensational" in the chef lambert interested in purchasing them. thank you both so much. it's been a great event. >> you're welcome. thank you for having me. >> of course. thanks, everybody and have a great night. >> here's a look at some publishing industry news.

recently retired "washington post" executive editor marty baron is writing a a book abot his time at the newspaper. the book titled collision of power, trump, basis and "washington post" will look at the quote confluence of political and technological power and what that portends for the press and how it exercises its own power in american democracy. fred jordan the copublisher now known as grove atlantic has died at the age of 95. he champion many authors in the 1960s that were considered part of the counterculture movement including allen ginsburg, william s burroughs and jack kerouac. in other news npd book scan report that print book sales were up over 24% for the week ending april 24. adult nonfiction sales saw another week of growth up 44% for the week and 27% for the year.

booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. you can also watch all of our past programs anytime at booktv.org. .. ello and welcome to another episode of white house history live. my name is doctor colling shokin i'm a senior vice president at the white house historical association and the director of the david center an organization with a mission to educate americans about the history of the executive mansion and the people who lived and worked there. be sure to visit our website,