Book Review: Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space by Alice Fahs

Abstract

Out on Assignment: Newspaper and the Making of Modern Public Space. Alice Fahs. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. 376 pp. $37.50 hbk.A rare photograph in Alice Fahs's book Out on Assignment shows five in late Victorian attire seated together in front of desk cluttered with papers and photographs and other newsroom miscellanea. Congenial and confident, the form tableau, with two leaning an elbow on the desk as they meet the camera's gaze, while another clutches the arm of the woman next to her in sisterly fashion and yet another holds kitten.Writers for the York World, the were all well-known in their day. What is remarkable about the photograph now, however, is that it calls into question historiographical assumptions about female journalists of the past who, if remembered at all, are presumed to have been brash and brassy tokens in field that was not simply male dominated but macho. The photograph illustrates Fahs's main point-that there was community of independent women writing for large urban newspapers and that together they created a new engagement between and public life, one centered around active participation and observation. Yet because of low regard for the sensational press, controversy as historical organizing principle, and sexism itself, all but few have been forgotten.Fahs, historian at the University of California, Irvine whose research examines the intersections of print culture, race, gender, and public space, provides an engaging and thorough look at many of these women, based on close reading of their work and other archival sources. Focusing on journalists working between roughly the mid-1880s through the 1910s, she shows how newspaper work was integral to increasing participation in the workplace generally, their expanded travel experiences, and their sense of adventure. As she writes, If the tropes of 'innocence' and an 'averted gaze' had structured Victorian selfhood, now 'experience' and an alert, forthright, all-seeing gaze reorganized ideas of what constituted appropriate knowledge for newspaper women.The book's organization underscores the interrelatedness between newspaper work and lives. The first chapter notes that between 1870 and 1900, the recorded number of working as reporters and editors increased from total of 35 to 2,193, and that did not include paid for specials on rates (freelancers). Many came to York from the South and West, driven by sense of adventure and the need for paid employment. The latter was particularly true during the economic downturn of the early 1890s, when such as Elizabeth Jordan found themselves supporting their families. Some were New Women-privileged, educated, and mostly white-while others were Bachelor Girls whose narratives focused on frugally feminine independent existence. Meanwhile, journalists such as Rose Pastor Stokes were working class, and African American such as Victoria Earle Matthews, Fannie Barrier Williams, Gertrude Bustill Mosell, and, of course, Ida B. Wells made name working for race papers. As group, newspaper were so visible that Margherita Arlina Hamm wrote regular column titled Among the Newspaper Women for the York Journalist beginning in 1891.Of course, many were relegated to the women's pages, the focus of Fahs's second chapter. Not surprisingly, many resented the segregation and limitation of women's topics (household hints, fashion, and recipes) and the ridicule of being called the hen coop. It is humiliating to do no work worth being taken seriously, wrote Anne O'Hagan, beauty editor of the York World. Moreover, some writers made healthy professional salary advising other to be domestic-a point that is troubling from feminist perspective. However, others used the space to explore progressive womanhood, using women's page space to create an ongoing public discussion that helped readers see new possibilities. …