News — NewsAndCulture
On the “Girl Stunt Reporters” Who Pioneered a New Genre of Investigative Journalism
The Chicago Times’s Girl Reporter might seem exceptional in her readiness to risk scandal to tell a story no one else would, but she was not alone. The same script was playing out in cities from coast to coast. She was just one of the nation’s “girl stunt reporters,” pioneering a new genre of investigative journalism, going undercover to reveal societal ills. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, women from Colorado to Missouri to Massachusetts dressed in shabby clothes and sneaked into textile mills to report on factory conditions, slipped behind the scenes at corrupt adoption agencies, fainted in the street...
How a Dangerous, Exploitative Railroad Industry Created J.P
Morgan’s Fortune Before the Jupiter of Roman myth could become king of the sky and thunder, he had to overthrow his father in a mighty battle. Not so for the Jupiter of Wall Street. J.P. Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the right path and steer his career, and even when his father was overbearing, Morgan never mounted a challenge. The creator of the biggest companies the world had ever known was, himself, very much the creation of paternal influence. The young Morgan, once established, proved instinctively suited to the times in which he lived. It was...