Sensational by Kim Todd (good short books .txt) 📗

long before Jordan came to Manhattan, Riis published an article in Scribner’s, soon to be a book, called “How the Other Half Lives.”

When Jordan finally arrived in spring 1890, after dreaming of this moment for six months, she encountered the World in the middle of one of its biggest reinventions. No longer content with the dim, rented building where Bly talked her way onto the elevator, Pulitzer was constructing the most grandiose structure he and his architects could conjure. The man himself was rarely on-site, roaming the globe, increasingly blind, constantly sick, sometimes with his wife and four children, often without. But he still wanted the polish on each marble column to reflect his vision of what journalism could be. It wasn’t there yet, though. Naked beams and a maze of scaffolding created a sense of disarray. And things felt ragged inside, too.

Bly was away lecturing and, as a result of her blowup with management, wouldn’t be coming back. Her book Around the World in 72 Days would be out soon, and she had a contract to write serialized fiction for the New York Family Story Paper. Nell Nelson, who continued to produce a steady stream of articles, was distracted. Her younger sister had vanished. In March 1890, a headline in the Chicago Tribune read: “Miss Virginia Cusack Missing.” On Sunday morning, Virginia said she was going to church but never came home. Her family was particularly alarmed, because Virginia didn’t seem well, distraught over a disagreement with her principal that resulted in her reassignment to a new school. The next day, though, a telegram arrived from Niagara Falls, saying that, instead of showing up for her new class, Virginia had boarded a train to New York, where she was planning to stay with her journalist sister, Nell.

Nelson at the time had been advocating for a New York State bill that restricted working hours of women to ten a day and provided for eight female factory inspectors to check for functioning fire escapes and bathrooms with running water. Inspectors also could keep an eye out for sexual harassment and child labor. Stunt reporters’ investigations showed the importance of women watching out for vulnerable populations. Their work inherently made the case for female doctors, prison matrons, factory inspectors. Nelson continued to cover other topics as well—a few days after her sister’s arrival, she wrote up a lecture advocating against corsets—but family troubles often occupied her mind. (Whatever ailed her sister Virginia, it must have been serious; she died at the end of the year.) Perhaps that’s why Jordan, who admired Nelson, described her as “cordial” but someone who “kept very much to herself and had no intimates.”

A new arrival, Jordan found herself caught between two editors, the veteran Cockerill, who hired her, and the upstart Ballard Smith, who was edging Cockerill out as circulation slipped. Smith had little time for a Cockerill protégé like Jordan. Struggling to get into print, Jordan was given trivial assignments, which, often as not, went nowhere. Before long, Jordan was ejected from the main office and sent to write about Long Island summer resorts for the World’s Brooklyn edition. The demotion, after all her big plans to awe the city with her journalistic prowess, was humiliating.

“I was out of New York almost as definitely as if I were working in China,” she commented.

Though the job wasn’t the kind she’d dreamed about, it wasn’t unpleasant. She wrote well and quickly received a raise for what didn’t seem like much work. Her mother, out for a visit, was pleased to see that her daughter’s life consisted of sampling resort after resort. And then, a meaty story fell into this idyllic beat and she resolved to use it to prove her mettle. President Harrison’s family was vacationing at an ocean-side cottage at Cape May. The cottage stirred controversy because it was a $10,000 gift to Harrison’s wife from a syndicate owned by a Philadelphia department store magnate. Some suspected it was a bribe. If the whiff of criminality wasn’t enough, the nation was obsessed with Harrison’s toddler grandson, Baby McKee, and clamored for news of him. No reporters had been able to get in. Jordan showed up at the door in a white linen suit and charmed Mrs. Harrison into inviting her for a conversation in the cool cottage rooms, simply appointed with cane furniture and throw rugs. Jordan emerged with columns full of house details and the antics of Baby McKee, in a report both lighthearted and rigorous. (Mrs. Harrison claimed not to know who had paid for the house, but Jordan interviewed donors in Philadelphia who seemed to view it as much more than a token of affection.) After this scoop, Jordan was called back to the World’s main office. And the president paid back the $10,000.

Back to the jostling, the cursing, the cigar smoking, the company of the best reporters the country had to offer. Legendary editors pushed her prose; she learned by reading the stories selected for praise and posted on the wall, by seeing which papers sold many copies, by reading recommended authors, by watching what phrases or sentences lit a fire in the editor’s eyes.

A letter from the Sunday World editorial department to Commander Robert Peary, the polar explorer, showed the kind of articles they prized. The paper had hired Peary’s wife, Josephine, for $1,000 to write a series about going north as her husband made another attempt to reach the North Pole. Peary suggested topics like features of the country and lives of the inhabitants. But an editor wrote back detailing how it should be done:

“The first story should deal with Mrs. Peary’s own feelings regarding the upcoming trip.” It should be told in her unique voice. Her confidence compared with the last journey north. Her thoughts about her husband’s polar ambitions. Her clothes. Her planned meals. In short: “every little detail calculated particularly to interest women.” Articles should include enough facts about the sweep of the expedition to be newsworthy but,