Dislocating the Masculine: How Nellie Bly Feminised Her Reports

Abstract

Nellie Bly’s pioneering contribution to eighteenth-century journalism has not been adequately recognised. The author bridges this gap in America’s media history by scrutinising the strategies she employed to make herself heard. By building in gender into her writing and articles and by interplaying the sensationalist with the reformer, Bly emerged out of the silence to which women were relegated to in the so-called Progressive Era. Not only was she thus able to chart new paths herself personally as an investigative reporter, travel writer and warfront correspondent, but she was also able to bring in some reform into the system, expose corruption and open the doors for the legion of women journalists who followed in her wake.