Undaunted

December 1, 2022

From Margaret Fuller to Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, and Ida B. Wells to the women who reported major news from the Civil War, World War II, and beyond to more recent stars like Joan Didion, Cokie Roberts, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and those following the #MeToo movement, veteran journalist Kroeger sweepingly chronicles the women who have shaped journalism in the United States.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 27, 2023
NYU emerita professor of journalism Kroeger (The Suffragents) delivers a sweeping history of female journalists from the mid-1800s to the present. Focusing on women at the top of the profession, Kroeger spotlights transcendentalist writer Margaret Fuller, who landed a job as the New York Tribune’s literary editor and front-page columnist in 1844; crusading investigative journalists Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells; and WWII reporters Martha Gellhorn and Marguerite Higgins. In the 1960s, female journalists tapped into civil rights legislation and second-wave feminism to boost gender equity in the profession, enabling more women to move into top management positions. Yet overall progress proved “lackluster” in the face of sexual harassment, ageism, and other discriminatory beliefs and practices. A revitalized “feminist discourse” in the 2010s led to renewed efforts to diversify newsrooms, while the #MeToo movement empowered reporters like Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey to break stories about Harvey Weinstein and other serial abusers. Kroeger more than proves that women have “faced down and overcome all manner of impediment to become integral to this enterprise,” but the jumble of names, dates, and events can be dizzying at times. Still, it’s a solidly researched and fluidly written overview of an important chapter in women’s history. Illus.

May 15, 2023
Since the nation's inception, wise women have been pursuing the decidedly difficult goal of making their voices heard through the public record. Writers such as Ida Tarbell in the nineteenth century and Fannie Hurst in the early twentieth paved the way for such intrepid wartime correspondents as Martha Gellhorn and Marguerite Higgins in the later twentieth. They, in turn, provided the foundation for contemporary reporters such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jill Abramson. Kroeger, a journalism professor, biographer, reporter, and editor, chronicles their stories and those of dozens of other trailblazing women journalists who prevailed in a traditionally male-dominated industry. While their numbers may have waxed and waned over the years, their influence remains unwavering. Battling the sexism of their colleagues and publishers, they endeavored to break a ceiling made not of glass but of newsprint and Nielsen ratings. Kroeger's immersive history examines the myriad challenges they faced professionally and from society writ large and celebrates the ingenuity, valor, and integrity with which they pursued their goals. Merging feminist struggles with journalistic triumphs, Kroeger sheds an important light on both spheres.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
A substantial work of research on women journalists over the last 180 years, underscoring both sexist hurdles and tremendous breakthroughs. A historian who has published biographies of Fannie Hurst and Nellie Bly, Kroeger, the founding director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, moves chronologically in this monumental study of journalists who made a significant impact in their time and forged the way for those who came later. She begins with one of the most influential: Margaret Fuller, a friend of the transcendentalists and leading advocate for birth control and other progressive causes. In 1870, "long before Upton Sinclair's The Jungle," Midy Morgan exposed the animal abuse in New York City's cattle market for the Times. The author then turns to the two ferocious Idas: Wells, a crusader against lynching, and Tarbell, who revealed the extent of the monopoly of Rockefeller's Standard Oil in McClure's from 1902 to 1904. By the turn of the century, it was assumed that women journalists were paid less than men, and women accepted it along with the sexist treatment and the belief that they should be relegated to the "soft" pages rather than hard news. Nonetheless, many young women continued to seek out the glamorous career of journalism. Many uncelebrated women journalists covered the world wars--so-called "front-page girls"--often without credit, though many achieved real breakthroughs--e.g., Martha Gellhorn, Rebecca West, Dorothy Thompson, and Rachel Carson. Despite feats by "supernovas" in the 1960s and '70s (Lois Wille, Ada Louise Huxtable, Charlotte Curtis), Kroeger cites the lawsuit by women journalists against Newsweek in 1970 as a turning point. Decades later, the #MeToo movement amplified the concerns of discrimination and won important victories. A recent study shows that women are still "sorely lacking" in "all realms of media," emphasizing the age-old refrain: "progress, setback; push, pull." A tour de force that should be in every library and school in the country.

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