“They’ll Never Make Newspaper Men”: Early Gendering in Journalism, 1884–1889

Abstract

Scholars have long noted that journalism is a heavily gendered profession. An examination of the initial five years of the Journalist, the first news trade publication dedicated to defining and standardizing modern journalism in the late 1800s, finds that gendering in the news industry began as early as 1884. This early establishment of gender-based newsroom work suggests that gender and professionalization shaped each other, intertwining so that modern journalism was gendered from the start. The Journalist provides evidence that male news workers standardized masculine character traits and behaviors as benchmarks in the field—ideals that still persist today.