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

himself, saw the potential of a vast new readership. Understanding the potency of symbolism, he used the pages of the World to raise $100,000 for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, after state and local governments had refused to contribute, and the gift lay in pieces in wooden crates. When the statue finally went up in 1886, it was a monument to Pulitzer’s creativity and drive, as well as to the paper’s sympathy for the plight of newcomers specifically and the underdog in general. This positioning paid off, and circulation soared, jumping from thirty thousand in 1883, when Pulitzer took over, to almost two hundred thousand in 1887. His paper was so identified with the interests of the poor, readers would write in offering tips on corrupt businesses and, sometimes, just flat out asking for money.

And in the years since Bly had started at the Dispatch, the allure of New York journalism had only grown. “Newspaper Row,” across from City Hall, right near the courts, was the pulse of the city. Reporters sprinted down the sidewalk, toward fires and train wrecks. As soon as printing presses finished each morning, wagons piled with papers rattled over the bridge to Brooklyn and uptown to Harlem; newsboys scooped up the crisp sheets and scattered like pigeons in front of a streetcar. The press offices were right next to each other: the squat Sun with European gables in the roof; the New York Times, a cream-colored cube; the eleven-story Tribune with its flashy clock tower, like an English church, rising above the rest. The World’s reputation outshone its unimpressive home in the dingy Western Union Building. It was the ideal place to immerse oneself in cutting-edge journalism. Its increasing circulation and audacious self-promotion drew letters from eager job applicants (or sometimes from their mothers),* flinging themselves at the light. But how to get in? All along the row, gatekeepers kept an eye out for hopeful young people bearing newspaper clippings and shooed them away.

One of those who made it past the front door was the young William Randolph Hearst. Freshly ejected from Harvard and just a year older than Bly, he was distinguished by eerily pale eyes, hair in a center part, and expensive taste in clothes that ran to glossy top hats. While his mother pleaded with the college president and paid tutors to prep him for tests in the hope he could graduate with his class, Hearst’s mind was elsewhere. He was obsessed with the Examiner, the failing newspaper his father owned in San Francisco, and all the ways he might make it shine. He wanted it to be the World of the West, the kind of paper “which appeals to the people and which depends for its success upon enterprise, energy, and a certain startling originality and not upon the wisdom of its political opinions or the lofty style of its editorials.” If his father would only let him run it, he’d redesign it, showcase gripping illustrations, and advertise it up and down the coast. In anticipation of this opportunity, Hearst spent the spring of 1886 at the World’s offices, learning how to put together a front page and how to pace a sensational story, eyeing the machinery, breathing in all that fresh ink.

Bly arrived in New York in spring 1887, also full of dreams of journalistic glory. In her letter to Wilson declaring she was off to the big city, she suggested with bravado—“Look out for me.” But by early August, her money was running short, her plan to take Manhattan by storm going nowhere. The competition for the few reporter jobs was fierce. One desperate writer placed an ad: “Editor and popular author wants work; anything at any price.” Though she hoped to turn her back on the Dispatch, Bly sent articles to her old paper, having few other takers. These offerings seemed increasingly like she was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Finally, a few days after writing a piece detailing a couple milking an obstinate cow in an alley, she had an idea that might get her inside the seemingly impenetrable newspaper offices. She would write an article on women in New York journalism and request interviews with editors of all the major papers. It was easy reporting; all she had to do was walk down the blocks of Newspaper Row (and climb many stairs and ride the rare elevator).

And it worked. After a summer of fruitless effort, she found herself in the inner sanctum, face to face with Charles Dana, the white-bearded editor of the Sun and former assistant secretary of war. Standing on his soft carpet, peering at the bookshelves that covered the walls, she asked in her western Pennsylvania drawl what he thought about women in journalism.

“I think if they have the ability,” he said, encouragingly. But then he added that they rarely did: they lacked the right education, maintained only a loose relationship with the truth, and were constrained by the bounds of respectability: “While a woman might be ever so clever in obtaining news and putting it into words, we would not feel at liberty to call her out at 1 o’clock in the morning to report at a fire or crime.”

The comment about lack of truthfulness stung, but she pressed on, circling closer to her real question, “How do women secure positions in New York?”

“I really cannot say,” Dana replied, clearly never having given it much thought.

At the World, she confronted Colonel John Cockerill. Physically imposing, he had a round face, brown eyes, and a vigorous mustache. Among his peers, Cockerill had a reputation for voluminous cursing, drinking to excess, and mocking whoever had just left the table. Pulitzer moved him to the World from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, partially for his editorial prowess, and partially because he’d killed a man. When a lawyer upset with the Post-Dispatch’s coverage of a political campaign stormed into the paper to complain, Cockerill shot him. He was exonerated, but the bad publicity depressed