Women in Journalism

Development

Some of the earliest women to enter journalism came from families operating printing presses. From the late seventeenth into the eighteenth centuries, men who worked as printers often trained their wives and daughters to help with the family business. Printing businesses sometimes involved publishing a small newspaper. Mary Katherine Goddard, who worked in her brother's print shops, is among the most famous of these early printers. During the American Revolution, she became editor and publisher of Baltimore's first newspaper, the Maryland Journal, and was the first to print the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signers.

Margaret Fuller is often cited as the first woman to work at a major newspaper. In the 1840s Fuller worked for the New York Tribune and is believed to be the first woman foreign and war correspondent. Among other events, she covered the Italian revolution for the Tribune. Most women journalists, however, didn't find themselves overseas covering wars. Before the U.S. Civil War, magazines geared specifically to women began as a way to attract circulation revenue (and eventually advertising dollars), opening up new opportunities for women writers and editors. After the Civil War, technological production improvements and postal system changes lowered the cost of producing magazines and made them easier to distribute. About 40 magazines existed in the United States in 1800. By 1900, that number increased to 5,500. The Civil War itself also opened up new avenues for women journalists as they took on slavery and [Page 1462]the right to vote for both blacks and women. In 1868, two of the most famous crusaders for women's suffrage, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, published and edited The Revolution, a newspaper focused on equal rights for women. More newspapers focused on women's rights followed, as did publications and stories aimed at social reform. In the 1890s, Ida Wells-Barnett risked her life calling for a stop to the lynching of black Americans. After her newspaper office was burned, she moved from Memphis to New York, where she continued writing.

By 1886 some 500 women worked on a regular basis in American newsrooms. They took their craft seriously and began to form press associations. Among the earliest were the Woman's Press Club of New York and the Woman's National Press Association. Such groups allowed women journalists to build solidarity, as they would not be allowed into male-dominated journalism clubs until the 1970s.

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