Sympathy, Madness, and Crime: How Four Nineteenth-Century Journalists Made the Newspaper Women's Business

In one of her escapades as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, the renowned Nellie Bly feigned insanity in 1889 and slipped, undercover, behind the grim walls of Blackwell's Island mental asylum. She emerged ten days later with a vivid tale about life in a madhouse. Her asylum articles merged sympathy and sensationalism, highlighting a developing professional identity - that of the American newspaperwoman.

The Blackwell's Island story is just one example of how newspaperwomen us...