seemed like a fun woman and i enjoyed reading about her but didn't get all of it in the. >> the next book maybe. >> you never know, there's plenty there. >> thank you spending your evening with us and everyone if you are not enticed to read the book, when women invented television, bookshelf.org for your favorite online platform for your favorite independent bookstore. jennifer, it's been a delight, we know you and i could probably go on a lot about tv. [laughter] we have to let the folks at home go back to when something other than watching us, maybe watching tv. >> that's right. >> good night, everyone and thank you for joining us. ♪♪

♪♪ >> without further ado, i'm delighted to introduce kim todd tonight to discuss her book, sensational. kim will be in conversation with stephanie tonight. so can, hi, ken. >> hello. >> and hi, stephanie. for those of you who don't know, kim todd book, sensational the hidden history of america's start reporters was released yesterday, happy publishing day. it highlights female undercover journalists who discovered the

raw of the early age. her books include sparrow, maria marion and the secrets of metaphor surfaces tinkering with even. stephanie is the author of a book called it is in reporters, she's written for numerous online publications including new yorker.com, smithsonian.com, paris review dailyhe and los angeles review of books. she currently lives in providence and i will be linking her book as well for those of you interested. kim and stephanie are going tos speak about 20 to 30 minutes and we open up to audience questions submitted through the q&a button son going to go ahead and turn it over to the. >> thank you, stephanie. 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. congrats, kim. >> thank you 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 be up again, it seems like the perfect time thank you to everyone attending also so maybe we can get this conversation started by focusing on beginnings. would you tell us about how stonend reporting got its start? >> yes, it got its start with lately, people have heard about the reporter of this era, probably nelly and she, as a one young woman in pennsylvania finagled her way into a job without a lot of experience but that didn't hold her back, she's very ambitious and in slightly more than a year, she said new

york is the place to be and 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 r job that's very competitive, everybody wants it to work for the same papers she worked for and women were not in high demand because it was like their utility reporter was but she got her first assignment and in by all and tearing to get herself committed and she spent ten days came out with an explosive exposé about the horrible way women were being treated the fact that many won't even mentally ill, they just seemed to be poor or immigrants with english or their families wanted to get rid of so on the one hand it was a valuable piece

of journalism and on the other hand she told in a way that was irresistible meeting, she had a personable narrator and she is a lot of dialogue and the characters she created were sympathetic and her voice was funny, she used simple sentences and sensoryid detail and it sola lot of papers so right after the within a year all of these newspapers wanted to hire young women to do stunts similar and it was all this opportunity a lot of women walked through. >> that is fascinating. you touched on the fact that nelly is from western pennsylvania were one of the means from my book came from the

and made her way to new york but worked in magazines and investigative journalism rather than an undercover newspaper reporter. what must have taken such cuts to do what nelly did, it seems deserving that she made her reputation pretty quickly and inaugurated this new genre but what really struck me about your book are incredibly vivid people, you don't learn about in history class or if you've been to journalism school, even if your interested in the gilded age, they don't even seem to come up but they are the source of soof many of the stories with thee as part of this era of reform and questioning authority. beyond nelly who i think is a

recognizable name, would you tell usha more about the other women you wrote about? >> sure, i'd like to highlight how fascinating it was to read your book after finishing writing sensational because it was the same event and describe the same decade but from the magazine side as opposed to sensational newspaper side and it was great to have that cracked open perspective as well as reading about another interesting journal from western pennsylvania but part of the one of the book was undercover and woman after woman who had an interesting life and did amazing work. one of the people who got me into this story was this character who never became linked with an identity, just known as a girl reporter at the chicago times and within a year,

a little over a year of the senate in december 1880 she went undercover to doctors offices throughout chicago asked for an abortion and she said she went to 200 doctors and printed a series of article after article in the chicago times of what she found and she found abortion was there for the asking and it was surprising because it was illegal at the time. the series was about how terrible this was in on the editorial page, it was condemnatory and moralistic but at the same time, she talked about techniques doctors used in medication she was offered and what dosage she was offered an education.

she disappeared right after the end of the series the part of the efforts in the book to figure out who she was. another reporter who also worked for the l times was helen cusack and she went into factories where women worked and reported on the conditions there. child labor, sexual harassment, unclean conditions and long hours these women were working on for pennies and her series was so successful she lived the nelly bly dream and went on to work for the new york world as was the goal of many of these reporters and one more a woman like to mention who wasn't working in this tradition, victoria matthews and she was an

african-americanhe worker and sh got her start as a lot of these other women did writing household hints and things you might find on a woman's page but became more of an activist in her work until within a decade she was writing about human trafficking, fake employment agencies luring women and offering them jobs but really basically held women turpitude and helps them find work and give them an education take care of the kids in some cases. >> it is striking that the way you put theng book together and started with the one writer who's ever been tied to one identity much as a girl reporter and nelly bly more famous but

many of these other women were leading unglamorous and un- famous lives as they did their work. that is the kind of history of ordinary people, i think it is 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 curious about it. >> it was interesting because the previous woman i wrote about was an artist and naturalist so very scant written cereals i can go to and these women were all writers so there's a ton of writing one of the questions of the, how much of the persona they presented in the writing, a

lot of the times they were using night in creating this interesting character on the page, how much was really a reflection of who they were so i tried to use the writing and write up with journals or letters they have and in some cases there was a lot. one of the reporters working in the tradition doing recordings, there's wonderful months of her material in the history center and there's letters of hers where she talks about, don't mention how ambitious i am but i'll tell you it to you my dear friend it is like anybody would know they are very ambitious, is not a secret but she felt it was. and photographs a transcript of oral history she did and for other women there was other hardly anything. another wonderful writer, expose

a lotis of important things and establish laws and get female factory inspectors, there's no return beyond her writing in the papers same for this mysterious reporter. one of my favorite sources i came upon his scrapbook which somebody put together in 1898 and the person who put it together from all of these women came together 1898 with this textile strike inot massachusets in which all the e-mail reporters in new york covered it in one way or another and this person was edging of a local massachusetts editor and he hated this woman writing what he thought were yale journalism trashy terrible stories and he

has this big scrapbook which is just newspaper articles, what he found was appalling coverage of the textile strike and he has a calling card in their various jokes about how durable female reporters are and it is valuable because a lot of these papers are digitized and they search for the writers names but a bunch of the really important ones aren't. like the chicago times and they hire these reporters as digitized library of congress so it was great to have these crumbling old newspaper that don't exist much anywhere else altogether that by this obsession of this particular editor. ...

ed happened in new bedford but close to where i am now per the other geographically close store that came up a few times in your book was a boarding case. was elizabeth jordan both covered in fall river. but, this period of time was one where gender dynamics were changing rapidly. not allll that rapidly a number of letters to her written dear sir and had to cross out the server and write a madame because that was the muscle memory of returns on the professional or to do with journalism, it was the exception and not the rule that you be writing to a woman.

but, there were these kinds of strict victorian norms were called into question and entering the workplace. and probably the figures of sensational hasten that processor made it happen. how do you see that interplay? and how possibilities for women were changing then. whether the -- it happen fast enough to be of advantage to the women reporters of this book. >> is really interesting. this particular genre embrace the fact they were women. and used that to their advantage. so unlike a lot of the prominent novelist you think of like the brontës and george elliott who adopted amount

pseudonyms to be taken seriously by these women were unabashed they were women. like talking about joking about her vanity and her hair and it was really hard to be pretend to be mentally or in front ofrt him. that was very much like a tool that she had in her toolbox. the other thing about being female was they were able to report on female dominated spaces. that is t why nelly was able to get committed to the asylum was silent for women. that was world no sin was able to expose the abuses all the factors she went to because she was a woman. this girl reporter of the times says it very overtly in her reporting. did i imagine over start my

reporting life on the likeness but a man could not of done it. it's true. a man would not of got that same response the chicago time started out sending a mail reporters and i have a sister who is in trouble. before they would give any advice. i think the downside for them, both of>> those things leave that writing very desirable. unmade people really want to readad it. talking with things it had not been talked about before on this very deliberately charming way. but downside was they were not taken seriously then they did not present themselves as being serious and they were not particular servers now. i think that was one of my tasks, what happens if we call their bluff and take them searcy?

>> host: just a follow-up from that. how far were these outliers from the course they would've otherwise taken? suspect it's always hard to tell what the conventional courses. what we have is what remains. we have etiquette books. we have articles talking about the woman question. how much of that reflects the actual lives we don't actually know. may be one step more conservative. i don't write for the most respectable papers. the "new york times", the son,

takes the paper sometimes women have an is your time of the west. they met like western pennsylvania or maybe the midwestn. i'm surprising how much people came from there not many women came up through boston or came up there new york. so the paperss that were hired these women tended to be, i'll use the word mockingly but the trash or newspapers. hertz is like i want to beat pulitzer at the circulation going to do whatever it takes to do that and i do not care groups are not respectable i'm going to win. and women were part of his strategies in the period. [laughter] get this sense of this very segregated world.

there were women's magazines and genteel contributors who sat home and watched columns about housekeeping and answering advice queries. then you have the magazines grouchy in the gilded age the general interest magazines become much more popular. i think as the front tier vanished in the country was settled by non-native people and schools were set up there were all these literate people wanted to read about the society around them. it could infiltrate certain papers definitely not all of them.

there is elitism in the newspaper world. but once your characters a break in, what did you find were the obstacles in their careers? those who were leaving journalism can you talk us through that? this is not necessarily a lifelong or career long path. >> i think the obstacles were, one i think particularly early on once a paper hired one woman there like we've got our woman we don't need anymore. you had reported thatce phenomenon. but i think for at least the stunt reporters who i'm talking about, who tended to be relatively young white

women put one the biggest obstacles, but does not resonate today but it's a notion of respectability. we wanted to do these experiments for they wanted to these things are quite physically risky. but they had to say on the respectable side of the line. and particularly journalist was respectability tied to credibility. once you fell out of the sphere of respectable women hood, you just weren't considered to be a credible voice on anything. so i think balancing that line was tough for a lot of women for the less respectable work paid more. then you have women saying did not want to do this kind of work anymore. it sure paid a lot better.

the better option is the boring f things, boringly for these women's pages which is not going to be able to help me support my poor mother which many many were helping to support the poor mothers. i think that was a big hurdle. also financial hardship. among this cohort of women they're all unique all quite similar demographically. their board during or right after the civil war. as a lot of orphans are a lot of people who did not have any father figure in their life that would belu there to kick take care of them or support them financially. i think another hurdle was i had to make some money. that was really driving factor for a lot of them as well as.

we did not talk about, talking about ida b wells. wehe tweeted if you ever confused, that definitely happens as written a book that focus on ida tarbell. they will often start talking. if you start talking about ida b wells i kind of revealed side of her avon including her in the cohort of a stunt reporter it was a different angle. you would not mind talking a little bit about your research on ida b well and how she fits into the book. >> gas clearly such a fastening, brave, inspirational character pro tried to be very clear in the

book she and victoria were not really start reporters. these hugely popular papers of the time the world on the new york journal. for black owned papers are at the precious self published a lot of books what i think it is more the morela moving moments of the book. in this cohort o of women in 1890 to raise money to fund the publication countries are driven out of memphis with the nature of religion reporting. so want to look at them not as start reporters but women who their livesrt of

the same time as is reporters making different innovations in investigative journalism executive same time. it was interesting to see. they're pretty much the same age i was how similar societal factors were working on that. there's just one moment a realization when i was working on the book, i'll get mix it a few months of each other. it's pure speculation on my part. i do think i'd had something to do with the age they they're all the early 30s and has a massive financial crash of 1893 which was still, ripples were still being felt at that time. maybe just the question of is

this unconventional path still more open to me for security of china take it now? if i had the opportunity birds to make that so interesting and so much of how you are how crude applied to today. i think maybe that is a link we should talk about is the legacy of these reporters. how they made their way into newspaper journalism. worker refine their legacy today? spirit i think it is multifaceted right? i think you see their legacy in immersion journalism. i think you see their legacy in investigative journalism.

i think you see it somewhat in memoir or you are creating this strong first-person narrator to tell a story in which the narrator's wife is very interwoven. you also see their legacy of the reported which might be the thing that lasted longest. rude knows what that character with its lois lane or the american girl dolls, really inspired a whole lot of women just kind of the notion of this. i was brave, courageous, curious creation.

finalizing the legacy of error and not such a good way is women's pages still exist. a lot of times are coded as other things a style section or we will have a collection of articles which we are going to put together with a special interest to c women. i really think that is unfortunate lag that we still see from the early time when the women's pages were really pioneered. i think women's business is everyone's business. is amazing female politician she should not be in the style pages were often she is. she should be on the front page. women's health, these reporters covered a ton, it is concern to everybody. there's my little mini op-ed. records really interesting to hear say then think about how

the format of these papers and magazines has remained the same as the world has changed. a world that is being reported. that is really interesting. going back i also find myself nodding because i found the same thing researching reporters there are all of these causes and topics associated with being a woman ida tarbell consciously shoved away from her and refused to talk about including suffrage but she did notoo support the right of women to vote because she did knowledge of the figurehead for that cause. which was obviously a gender cause. she just wanted to be an investigative journalist. not a woman journalist just to do this type of work. i think i'm going to be noticing that much more sharply now that women's

journalism and journalism are sadly two different categories. i realize the time is ticking andca there will be people with questions pizza maybe now is a good time to open it up to the audience. >> that would be great. >> that is a good plan i've really enjoyed this conversation. i feel like this is just ready to be made into a tv series, or a movie. this to be an excellent series i feel like. do you know if any of these women's lives have been turned into television or done tb?hing for back there been multiple different versions of the nelly bly story. i don't know about the other women who came in her wake. i think there are a lot less about them. another spin a lot of nonfiction about ib wells.

i could see this as a podcast series. you should start one. [laughter] note too self. i'mor curious to for the women who were married, do we have any idea or knowledge of what the husbands thought of their work? were they supportive? spirit get very sprayed all the women's stories were pretty individuals. if you think about the three that i mentioned, so nellie bly married a very rich very old man. kind of thinking she was going to retire from reporting. but then within a year things started to go sour between them. and she was back reporting maybe as a way to make her out income or assert her own independence. she would return to reporting throughout her life. she would do various things and break away from it.

but she kept coming back, and back, and back and in the reporting on world war one among other things great nelson disappeared the minute she got married. she got a beautiful house in new jersey and had two daughters. i don't know that she wrote again. they have her and things like that. she marrieded pulitzer's sort of right hand amanda actually than hearst hired away. so he remained very involved at a veryav high level in the newspaper business. but she was not doing any writing herself. and ida b wells despite having four children i think started editing a newspaper like the day after her wedding pretty much. [laughter] she went in and out of doing .ournalism she also had the pretense she

is going to leave it behind was very thin. but then just think about other women i think of the top of my head of three divorces verymen who married young and in their careers really took off and overshadowed their husband or they were always away. and yes reporting produce a lot of failed marriages as well. e a question ine the q&a button. stephanie doing to ask that one? i think it is from maya. strict guests. my has a copy of sensation i'm so excited to read it, can you talk a bit about these girl reporters? for the friends or rivals? did they hang out together? >> that is a great question. so i already mentioned that >> doria earl matthews had been hugely supportive of ida b wells at this period in her life. and i would say that if all of the people that i looked at

they seemed the most into building a community of women. again she organize this benefit, she organized the settlement houses to really support these young women who were moving north from the south. >> said there were a number of women who were at new york at the same time but the perspective a get on them as to the eyes of elizabeth jordan was a reporter there and went on to become an editor at harper's bazaar and that eventually it harbors books. her goal was interesting. she was one, a reporter did a lot of reporting. at the height of the. start reporter craze i will call in 1896, she was at the world a hiring start and signing stop reporters and framing with that page was going to look like. and she talks about sort of

coming in all excited in 1890 when she started there. sort of looking at the legends and their is not the sense that she interacted with them very much. more like they were these figures passing in the halls. but eventually like the world did hire quite a number of women per there's this wonderful picture of jordan and these other female reporters of the world. one of them is holding a kitten and they're sitting inside of a messy desk. you get the sense there's quite a bit of camaraderie among them. >> that was a good question. kind of wondering that myself too. are there any stories that did not make the cut? >> oh gosh that's a good question but i've been so deep in the drafts of this book for so long. well, there was one reporter

named eta patterson who came later and was known as the nellie bly's of the westbury she did some reporting in denver. she was a definitely somebody who i i could have gone deeper into if i wanted to. and there are people who get a passing mention who could be flushed out more. really they were just women doing this all over the country. kind of a once i had my handful i did not let myself get too involvedea anywhere else. in anyone else for those were the discoveries of the book. no it was not five women who were doing this. it was really like many, many papers from coast-to-coast who were hiring women to this kind ofof work. >> interesting. what do you want people to take away from this book and from these women's stories? i know you mentioned earlier kind of one of the things that

has stayed with us over time that is not necessarily a positive thing. it's these women's columns and women are thrown into fashion -- might be fashion side of things we make a lot of assumptions about what women read and women politicians where they might appear in a magazine. is there that you kind of hope people take from this? back to i have enough fingers on my hands? all the things i want people to take on this. one is just the contribution that these women made both to investigative journalism and to think of his creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction per there's a whole section in the book i talk about how people usually talk about the genesis of fiction. and it's essentially a man, to man, to man and then i really feel like these women started a lot of then things which is

part of it we think of his creative nonfiction today. that is one. to his stephanie was talk about this a little bit. just the way that there were so many. there were so many and it's not like in history we get nellie and ida b wells and ida tarbell are doing interestingf things. women are always wanting to live interesting lives and being treated as full human beings. no matter what time. you check in with. it's interesting to look at all of these individual women's struggles to do that. head then i think three comets really question the way we values women's worth. i think the reason these reporters were forgotten as they were writing and a female dominated genre about women. and i still think we hold that work in leiter esteem than we do either writing about men writing by men.

smoking out your book just came out pretty almost hate to ask this question. i am curious if there is any thing floating around in your head right nows about what you might work on next? or a newo direction? >> one of the girls as to the girl reporter was britta got a certain distance along that path. actually have some new leads. [laughter] we might need an appendix in theh paperback. i'm in a poke around a little bit on that respect. >> that is sook tantalizing. just going back just a minute but i am curious how you came across these women. them inacross school? later on? how is your hear aboutgo them? because reading the work of nellie and it was very engaging as i mentioned.

i also heard of the girl reporter through a book by leslie ragan called when abortion was a crime. a kind of put those two stories together. and there's this wonderful book called front-page girls which talks about some reporting as a genre. the combination of those three books, reckons book includes book where bill is this was not one person during these kind of things for this is a decade of women doing these kinds of things. suspect that maybe some good future reading to do after this one. i think we are almost out of time part always like to end with a question and i will ask us for both of you too. what are you both of you reading right now? what is on your nightstands? >> i just finished stephanie's

bug. [laughter] thoughts what i'm reading right now. right up until this morning. it is really wonderful. i cannot stress that enough how much i enjoyed learning about tarbell and hersi journey. which was again demographically like these women but so dramatically different. >> i keep wishing this happened but i wish i would've nobly read yours while i was researching my book. i think that would have been huge and so fun. i've been on a fiction reading strictly to finishing the novel called the glass hotel. >> that is been a popular one. >> excellent this has been really fun. i'm looking for to finishing the book myself and am seeing friends that are in the journalism and reporting world that i plan on gifting this book two. i did just pop links to both sensational and citizen reporters in the chapter

anyone interested in purchasing them. and thank you both so much for this is been a great event. select thank you for having me. >> of course thanks everybody have a great night. ♪ ♪'s black book tv on cspan2 every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for book tv comes from these television companies and more. including media column. suspect the world change in an instant the media, was ready for internet traffic soared and we never slowed down preschools and businesses went virtual and we powered a new reality. because at media, we are built to keep you our head. >> media, along with these television companies support book tv on cspan2 as a public service. >> book tv in prime time starts now. first