User:Oughtta Be Otters/sandbox/sob sisters

Sob sisters is a derogatory term coined in the early 1900s to refer to female newspaper journalists, especially those who wrote human interest stories. These stories were published in parts of the paper other than the "Ladies' Section" of white-owned newspapers. Frequently writing in profusely flowery language, scholars are split on whether these writers stories were pushing for social reform, purely a branch of yellow journalism, or a combination of both. (THE CONSUMATE SOB SISTER; Sob Sisterhood Revisited,  O'Malley, E. (1921, Feb 12). SOB SISTERS. Los Angeles Times (1886-1922)) The moniker was often applied generally, to any female reporter (Revisited), and has variously been used to describe a range of professional women: female advice columnists, female authors of melodramatic works, actresses in sappy films, or female "do-gooders." (oed; Revisited; Sob sisters. (1982, Mar 03). New York Times (1923-Current File)) it also became a popular character type in films and novels. (, Parsons, L. O. (1942, Jan 29). Miss loy joins the 'sob sisters'. The Washington Post) Occasionally, it was also used to insult male reporters who were viewed as soft on crime or on social issues. (By the Associated Press. (1935, Mar 24). Governor attacks pleas for slayer by 'sob sisters'. The Washington Post (1923-1954) )

History
A 1936 account from journalism historian Ishbell Ross claims that Irwin Cobb, a writer for the New York Evening News coined the term "sob sisters" in 1907 to describe four female journalists: Winifred Black, Dorothy Dix, Nixola Greeley-Smith, and Ada Patterson. (Ross, Ishbell (1936): Ladies of the press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider. New York: Harper and Brothers. p.65 ) These were the four female members of the press corps allowed into the courtroom to cover Harry Kendall Thaw's sensational trial for the murder of architect Stanford White, over his treatment of Evelyn Nesbit. Called the "Trial of the Century," the public interest in all aspects of the proceedings and the people involved created financial incentives for papers to include human interest stories about the main actors in the trial. Because the judge attempted to control crowding in the courtroom by banning women except family members and these four journalists, their reporting -- along with stories by eight other female journalists who earned bylines writing about this trial -- were in great demand from the public. (Revisited) However, the requirement to bring "feminine" perspective and voice to earn their special dispensation to enter the courtroom and equally to earn their readership also left them accused of being illogical and melodramatic. (Revisited) Nonetheless, this trial comprised the largest and most public push by female journalists on the crime beat to that time,(Revisited) and the term "sob sister" soon became popular in the media.(NGRAM VIEWER)

The rolls of female journalists at newspapers in the United States had been growing already by the time of the Thaw trial. The era of sob sisters' journalism may have kicked off in the first decade of the 1900s, but by that time women already comprised 7.3 percent of individuals who declared their profession as "journalist" on the 19000 Census.(Sob Sisters/Joe Saltzman). Prior to the sob sister era, the late nineteenth century was the era of "girl stunt reporters," epitomized by the muckraking investigative reporting of Nellie Bly (https://www.jstor.org/stable/30041927) but also included more sensational stunts, such as Bly's subsequent stint as an elephant trainer and Elizabeth Jordan's night in a reportedly haunted house. (Out on Assignment p164 and https://www.jstor.org/stable/27747271)

Over the next decade, the number of women identified as journalists rose from 2,193 to over 4,000.(Cosmic) Although scholars who looked for Cobb's first use of "sob sister" in 1907 papers were not able to find it (Olson, Lutes), the term certainly appears in newspapers by 1908. ("Third Term Sob Squad" Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) 22 Feb 1908, Sat Page 4 ; "News and Gossip of New York" Dec 1908).

Women journalists were wanted for sob-sister work because they drew large readerships and indeed boosted circulation. For example, scholar Phyllis Abramson reported that Dix was said to have a readership of 35 million readers for her column and received 100 to 2,000 letters daily.(Cosmic)

From 1900 through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the 1920s, women journalists were making great strides in newsrooms and the public sphere. This can be shown by the numbers of women journalists recorded by the US Census. In 1880, approximately one decade after women’s pages began popping up in papers around the country, the census recorded 288 women among 12,308 people who reported “journalist” as their career. In 1900 that number had increased to 2,193 women among 30,098 journalists; by 1910 more than 4,000 women were working in journalism. By 1920 that number had risen to 7,105. 2  (Cosmic)

Historian Frank Mott writes that “women flocked into newspaper work in the eighties.” By 1886, 500 females worked regularly on American newspapers. Two years later, there were 200 women working on New York newspapers alone.5

Mott, Frank Luther, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 years: 1690 to 1940, New York, The MacMillan Company, 1949, pp. 489-490.

The 1900 census recorded 2,193 women in journalism, 7.3 percent of the profession.7 Few women worked as reporters in a newsroom. Many worked at home writing columns or articles thought to be primarily of interest to women. Some were true “sob sisters” writing sentimental stories. Others were more adventurous, undertaking muckraking exposes.

Sob Sisters/Joe Saltzman 2

Gordon, whose 1908 stunt flying across Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in a hot air balloon with aviator

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5325/pennhistory.83.4.0470.pdf As the century turned, stunt-girl journalism gave way to the title “sob sister,” and women journalists found themselves being shepherded into a new stereotype of an emotive woman, just one of the ways that women’s reporting was disparaged and sidelined. Noted David Gudelunas, “The term was never used in a flattering way, and although some sob sisters, such as Dorothy Dix,. . . did their part to reclaim the term, the slang always implied that sob sisters were something less than ‘real’ reporters.”19 Where stunt girls earned their bylines by doing daring feats that created spectacles and drew readers by the sheer temerity of the acts, sob sisters covered public affairs, particularly legal cases, in a way that foregrounded emotions. Sob-sisterhood purported to give readers insight into the inner sentiments underlying criminal cases and social ills of all types. The sob-sister appellation was coined in 1907 by a male reporter to describe the four newswomen who had been sent to cover the trial of Harry Kendall Thaw, who was accused of murdering New York architect Stanford White, whom he believed was having an affair with Thaw’s wife, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. The four newswomen, Dorothy Dix, Winifred Black Bonfils, Ada Patterson, and Nixola Greeley-Smith, sat in the front row of the press box and wrote sympathy-filled reports of the trial.20 Because of their writing style, New York World reporter Irvin S. Cobb derisively dubbed them “sob sisters” in his own report on the trial.21

These stories on legal cases “only boosted circulation,” she said.22 Scholar Jean Marie Lutes wrote, however, that the Thaw trial “gave white female reporters unprecedented visibility and new opportunities to cover serious news.”23 Women

For example, scholar Phyllis Abramson reported that Dix was said to have a readership of 35 million readers for her column and received 100 to 2,000 letters daily.24 Numbers of this magnitude meant that woman reporters were in demand more than they were mocked because their turns of phrase attracted new readers. Newswoman Helen Rogers Reid stated: There are still a lot of prejudices against newspaper women and the future is not a rosy one, but newspapers are an all-around institution and need the woman’s point of view. . . . Ability is still rated

as a natural masculine characteristic and is considered the exception among women. A woman should work harder to establish the idea that a good piece of work is only a normal piece of work.25

Like their sister journalists at papers across the United States, Pittsburgh’s turn-of-the-century newswomen were advancing in newsrooms and taking on roles in all sections of the paper. They used the sob-sister title as a powerful tool to gain front-page access for women’s bylines. Even if their sobriquet was used derisively, sob sisters captured public imagination, and they were featured in early Hollywood movies and other pop culture arenas; they had a “pseudo-celebrity status” that brought attention to their papers, and female journalists as a whole “did tend to become fairly significant popular icons in their own right in a way that most journalists [did] not.”27 Gordon herself defended the sob sister and noted her importance to the reading public: The word is now obsolete. It meant the girl reporter who covered the human interest side of the news. She described what the murderess wore at the trial; the needs of the neglected children, the inside story of a divorce. She gave the flair and color of great public gatherings, the sidelights of fires, wrecks, floods and other disasters. . . . She was the repository of secrets, a cosmic shoulder for the public to lean upon, the throbbing link which bound the newspaper to its readers by personal interest, the element that provided the feeling of “you and me.”28 In this statement, Gordon conveys that she and her fellow sob sisters saw themselves in a relationship with their readers, a place where she and her readers were “you and me” rather than an anonymous writer speaking to an anonymous audience.

Some historians claim that so-called women’s reportage served a containment purpose. Simply by placing the name “woman’s pages” on certain parts of the paper, the editors and publishers were stating that the rest of the paper, by default, was for men, and, in fact, women’s news was not masculine (i.e., serious). Press scholars Pingree and Hawkins wrote, The fact that there is a “women’s” section may be the most powerful message of all that the news is for and about men: how odd to think of one separate section for half the population, while the rest of the paper is for the other half. . . . To make this point plainer, imagine labeling the parts of the paper directed stereotypically at men (sports, business, politics) as “men’s” sections.29

Stunt-girl journalists pushed women into the public sphere. As Fahs notes, women journalists were remaking gendered identities, and in this way, they “helped to define a modern gendered selfhood.”32 In other words, newswomen used their positions to change public perceptions of women’s spaces and abilities.

“Until the ‘sob sister’ came along, women were resigned to writing only club and This content downloaded from 64.62.148.195 on Sun, 20 Dec 2020 09:26:39 UTC All use subject to htt 480 pennsylvania history society news. . . . I like to think we blazed the way for women being accepted as equals of men reporters.”37 In 1917 Gordon wrote an impassioned apology for newswomen debunking the public perception that the newswoman’s lot is an “easy” one. She noted, “There is not a newspaper woman in the world who does not love her work—if she did not, she speedily would get out of it, for only a deep, tremendous love for this work can carry one over the hard places in it.”38 Gordon then detailed the types of stories that the “sob sister” must undertake, including would-be divorcees, politicians, “weeping boys” who have been hauled in front of the judge for their first offense (“One’s heart aches for them, and one always appeals to the magistrate,” Gordon said), and her scoop as the first woman to interview National League star shortstop Johannes Peter “Honus” Wagner

She was what was known as a “front-page girl,” although her work ran throughout the paper, including in the woman’s section.

While Gordon had been hired by the Press as an experiment, her writing was so popular that she became one of the first women to earn a byline in any Pittsburgh paper.42 That byline did not mean that she was seen as equal to her male counterparts, though. While male reporters earned around $20 per week, she brought home just $12 per week.43 Her stories featured interviews with the famous, including Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, Theodore Roosevelt, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; she also executed many stunt pieces, including entering a lion cage and flying over Allegheny County in both a balloon and an airplane.44 She wrote about “the North Side brothels of the famous madam Nora Lee,” the Willie Whitla kidnapping, the Westmoreland coal strike, and an explosion at the Marianna mines that killed more than 125, an event that was called at the time, “the worst disaster in the history of mining in Washington County,” or for that matter, anywhere.45 In her account of Gordon’s work, Ross wrote, “‘Our Gertie’s’ list of stunts in quest for a good story makes good reading in and of itself: ‘Miss Gordon went up in a balloon for a story; walked into a cage with seven lions; helped the police to raid a Chinese gambling den; covered the Billy Whirla [Whitla] kidnapping and a mine disaster; was kissed by Sarah Bernhardt and interviewed all kinds of celebrities.’”46 Even after sh

as a sob sister who listened to the stories of the downtrodden and whose stories created substantive sympathy and sometimes change for the disenfranchised grew, her mailbox filled with requests for help and praise. Her response to the accolades was subdued, however. “I got the reputation of helping people, but that was my paper more than me,” she wrote in 1949. 50 That reputation, however, was a formidable tool that readers ranging from battered wives seeking a separation from their husbands to prison inmates proclaiming their innocence tried to use. In one case, Gordon was instrumental in publicizing the story of Alexander Killen, a man who had served nineteen years in prison for a crime that he claimed he did not commit. In her response to Alexander Killen’s letter to her, Gordon wrote that when she walked into the interview, she did not think it would “possess so much heart interest as I found in it.” However, she found herself swayed to the prisoner’s side by the evidence presented to her by Killen himself and “Attorney Rody P. Marshall, Detective Roger O’Mara, John P. Harris and the others who are trying for the man’s freedom, together with the opinion of the prisoner which his guards and keepers hold.”51 Even though her original story did not produce an immediate release for Killen, he was convinced that her presentation of the case to the public would add to the work of other advocates and gain him freedom.

Many of Gordon’s stories regaled audiences with tales of women overcoming great odds or fighting back against an abuser or attacker. In some cases, these stories allowed her to portray women as courageous fighters, as in the May 25, 1910, story, “Shudders as She Tells of Battle for Her Honor.” This story profiles eighteen-year-old Emma Jungbluth, “who, although only 18 years of age, is matured in appearance of face and figure, and is very attractive looking,” as a woman who showed “unusual nerve and real courage”

in all arenas. One tongue-in-cheek offering, “Woman Again Invades Man’s Domain with Usual Result,” begins by declaring, “Scarcely a day goes by that something does not crop up which shows how, gradually, women are taking from men all of their privileges.”59 While she did not always play to humor to get public support for women’s rights, Gordon’s writings made women’s rights leaders and issues palatable to her reading audience.

Pittsburgh’s women reporters were a tight-knit group who competed with one another, read each other’s work, and supported each another, even as they saw their fellow newswomen landing stories that garnered enviable praise and attention. At the Press Gord

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3568084.pdf By banning all women from the courtroom except the news- women and the defendant's family and friends, the judge created a professional pressure cooker for the female reporters. His order ensured their visibility and made their presence worthy of com- ment. Since the reporters were the only women allowed to remain other than Harry's wife, mother, and sister, and two family friends, they were inevitably linked to that small group, the nexus of trial publicity. Moreover, the newswomen acted as a lightning rod for the most troubling questions raised by the testimony. They took notes while witnesses documented the privileges of wealthy men and the limited options of poor wom 0 The sob sisters trod carefully to avoid antagonizing the court, articulating women's legitimate interests in the trial and separating themselves from the unauthorized observers. Several mentioned the judge's ban on female spectators approvingly. None complained in print. Some did argue, however, that female readers, particularly young girls, needed to know details about sexual predators. "Girls, are you reading all about the Thaw trial?" asked Beatrice Fairfax. "If you are, I want you to take it to heart and profit by it. There is a lesson for every one of you in it. No doubt at one time in her career you all envied Evelyn Nesbit Thaw.... But now, girls, see where that 'luck' has landed her. Every one of you, no matter how poor or hard-worked you may be, is a thousand times better off" ("What Girls May Learn" 8). ly. Here we arrive at a basic conundrum of the female court reporter's situation. Her womanhood was her angle. But her womanhood was also her primary obstacle to get- ting the story. Newswomen earned special notoriety simply by being the only authorized female observers.22 Their comings and goings were reported with equal inter

Olson, C. (2016). “A Cosmic Shoulder for the Public to Lean Upon”: Gertrude Gordon and the Rise of Women Journalists. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 83(4), 470-501. doi:10.5325/pennhistory.83.4.0470

https://daily.jstor.org/the-sob-sisters-who-dared-to-cover-the-trial-of-the-century/

Sob Sisterhood Revisited Author(s): Jean Marie Lutes Source: American Literary History, Autumn, 2003, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 504-532 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3568084

https://www.ijpc.org/uploads/files/sobsessay.pdf (in fiction)

Abramson, P. (1990). Sob Sister Journalism. United Kingdom: ABC-CLIO.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6127&context=etd (in ficiton)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/Much-more-than-a-sob-sister-San-15504931.php

On the Front Page in the "Jazz Age": Journalist Ione Quinby, Chicago's Ageless "Girl Reporter" Author(s): Genevieve G. McBride and Stephen R. Byers Source: Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-), Vol. 106, No. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 91-128 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Illinois State Historical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jillistathistsoc.106.1.0091

oed

From Sob Sister t om Sob Sister to Society E o Society Editor: The St or: The Storied Car oried Career of Dor eer of Dorothy Ashby Pownall

Roggenkamp, K. (2007). Sympathy and Sensation: Elizabeth Jordan, Lizzie Borden, and the Female Reporter in the Late Nineteenth Century. American Literary Realism, 40(1), 32-51. Retrieved December 20, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27747271

Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–1930. By Jean Marie Lutes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. 240 pp. $45.00/$18.95 paper.

https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/jh343w434 (yellow journalism and tabloids)

Alice Fahs https://www.google.com/books/edition/Out_on_Assignment/xaWuoOj4BtkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=sob%20sister

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Little_Lindy_Is_Kidnapped/sxbYDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sisters+%22ladies+OR+womens+section%22&pg=PT54&printsec=frontcover

Ngram: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sob+sister%2Csob+sisters&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3

Congressional hearing of "rackets": https://www.google.com/books/edition/Investigation_of_So_Called_Rackets/BWpLAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sister+OR+sisters&pg=PA421&printsec=frontcover

National encampment of vetarens: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Proceedings_of_the_National_Encampment_o/qJAMAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sister+OR+sisters&pg=PA24&printsec=frontcover

Ol' Rum River https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ol_Rum_River/Wrg9AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sister+OR+sisters&pg=PA102&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Los_Angeles_City_of_Dreams/f1MLAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sister+OR+sisters&pg=PA255&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Square_Deal/JJBZAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sister+OR+sisters&pg=PA409&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bulletin_University_Extension_Series/QJE0AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=sob%20sister

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Time/JiEHAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=sob%20sister (in fiction)

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Air_Travel_News/_NKFLHpS_UAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=sob%20sisters

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Journal_of_Health_and_Physical_Educa/6BhMAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sob+sister+OR+sisters&pg=PA570&printsec=frontcover

https://www.facebook.com/PBSBlackCultureConnection/videos/688868685252977/