JOURNALISM 375/COMMUNICATION 372
JOURNALISM 375/COMMUNICATION 372
THE IMAGE OF THE JOURNALIST
IN POPULAR CULTURE
SPECIAL EDITION:
SOB SISTERS
The Image of the Female Journalist
SYLLABUS-COURSE READER
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Journalism 375/Communication 372
Four Units – Wednesday – 2 p.m. to 5:20 p.m.
ASC 204 – 21220R -- Fall, 2008
( Joe Saltzman, 2005
JOURNALISM 375/COMMUNICATION 372
SYLLABUS AND COURSE READER
THE IMAGE OF THE JOURNALIST IN POPULAR CULTURE
SPECIAL EDITION: SOB SISTERS
THE IMAGE OF THE FEMALE JOURNALIST
Fall, 2008 – Wednesday– 2 to 5:20 p.m. – ASC 204
Joe Saltzman, Professor of Journalism
Office: 213-740-3918
Home: 310-377-8883
E-Mail: saltzman@usc.edu
Office Hours:
Monday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Wednesday 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (By Appointment)
SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM POLICY ON
PLAGIARISM/FABRICATION/ACADEMIC INTERGRITY
Plagiarism is defined as taking ideas of writings from another and passing them off as one’s own; in journalism, this includes appropriating the reporting of another without clear attribution. The following is the School of Journalism’s policy on academic integrity as published in the University catalogue: “Since its founding, the USC School of Journalism has maintained a commitment to the highest standard of ethical conduct and academic excellence. Any student found guilty of plagiarism, fabrication, cheating on examinations, or purchasing papers or other assignments will receive a failing grade in the course and be dismissed as a major from the School of Journalism. There are no exceptions to this policy.”
ACADEMIC ACOMMODATIONS
Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSPO. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The phone number DSPO is 213-740-0776.
INTERNSHIPS
The value of professional internships as part of the overall educational experience of our students has long been recognized by the School of Journalism. Accordingly, while internships are not required for successful completion of this course, any student enrolled in this course who undertakes and completes an approved, non-paid internship during this semester shall earn academic extra credit herein of an amount equal to one percent of the total available semester points for this course.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This special edition of Journalism 375/Communication 372 concerns the impact of conflicting images of the journalist in movies and television on the American public’s perception of newsgatherers in the 20th and 21st centuries. A special edition of the class emphasizes the image of the female journalist in popular culture and its influence on the public’s perception of its news media. The public takes its images wherever it sees and hears them and in the end, it really doesn’t matter to the public if these images are real or fantasy, true or false. The reality is that few people ever witness a journalist in action. They rarely visit a newspaper or magazine office or a broadcast newsroom or any other place where journalists work to report the news of the day. Yet they have a very specific idea of what a journalist is and what he or she does because they have read about journalists in novels, short stories and comic books, and they have seen them in movies, TV programs, plays, and cartoons. The public bases its impressions and understanding of the news media on these images. This class explores why this is so.
Course Outcomes:
To gain an understanding of the various images of the female journalists in popular culture and how they influence the public’s perception of its news media. You will learn why these images are important to our way of life, our very democracy, and study the ramifications of how the public perceives and judges the media and why this can have a profound effect on the success or failure of our American democracy. One of the primary objectives of this course is to teach you to be more sophisticated in your understanding of the news media, their functions and the reasons the American people have a love-hate relationship with the messengers who bring the important news and information to them.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
There is a book report (see below), a mid-term examination and a final examination.
The material covered in the examinations will be based on the lectures, readings and videos. You are expected to pay attention to themes and concepts. In the syllabus are class notes and summaries to help you keep track of all the films involved. It also helps to keep a careful record of film titles, main characters and their positions, and key plot points. All take-home assignments must be typed, double-spaced and turned in on time. No exceptions.
The class will begin promptly at 2 p.m. Since each section of the class will include video, it is important that we start on time if you want to get out on time.
GRADING
You will be graded on:
Class Participation 100 points
Mid-Term Examination 200 points
Book Report 300 points
Final Examination 400 points
CLASS SCHEDULE
CLASS ONE: INTRODUCTION (August 27)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Glossary, Classes One and Two. “Sob Sisters: The Image of the Female Journalist in Popular Culture” (in syllabus-course reader and on the Web site).
In-Class Video: Sob Sisters: The Image of the Female Journalist in Film and TV Summary, 1929-2003.
CLASS TWO: THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE NEWSPAPER FILM – THE 1930s -- THE SOB SISTERS (September 3)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Three. Capra Book: Part Six – Conclusion, Pp. 141-148. Part Two: The Female Journalists -- Hollywood’s Sob Sisters, Introduction, Pp. 53-56.
Film Excerpts include: “SOS Coast Guard,” “The Undersea Kingdom,” “Front Page Woman,” “We’re Only Human,” “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” “The Mystery of the Wax Museum,” “Smart Blonde,” “Fly Away Baby,” “Blondes at Work,” “Torchy Runs for Mayor,” “Torchy Blane: Playing With Dynamite,” “Nancy Drew Reporter,” “Conspiracy.”
CLASS THREE: FRONT PAGE FEMALE REPORTERS (September 10)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Four. Capra Book: Gallagher, Pp. 57-61. Stew Smith, Pp. 14-21. Conroy, Pp. 86-88.
Film Excerpts include: “Platinum Blonde,” “Back in Circulation,” “There Goes My Girl,” “His Girl Friday,” “Switching Channels.”
Assignment: Written Book Review Proposal - September 12, 2007
CLASS FOUR: BABE BENNETT (September 17)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Five. Capra Book: Babe Bennett, Pp. 68-73. MacWade, Pp. 89-91.
Film Excerpts include: “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936) and “Mr. Deeds”
(2002).
CLASS FIVE: THE 1940s. THE 1950s. (September 24)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Six. Capra Book: Part Four, The Publisher and Media Tycoons, Pp. 109-110. Kay Thorndyke, Pp. 124-128.
Film Excerpts include: Part One – The 1940s: “Arise My Love,” “Christmas in Connecticut,” “June Bride,” “Woman of the Year,” “State of the Union.” Part Two: The 1950s: “-30-,” “Teacher’s Pet,” “Washington Story,” “The Big Knife,” “Another Time, Another Place,” “To Please a Lady,” “Another Time, Another Place,” “Flesh and Fury,” “Texas Lady,” “The Land Unknown,” “Living It Up.”
Book Review Approval
CLASS SIX: ANN MITCHELL (October 1)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Seven. Capra Book: Ann Mitchell, Pp. 74-82. Henry Connell, Pp. 97-102. D.B. Norton, Pp. 117-123.
Film Excerpts include: “Meet John Doe”
CLASS SEVEN: THE 1970s. LOIS LANE (October 8)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Classes Eight and Nine
Film Excerpts include: Part One, The 1970s – “The Lives of Jenny Dolan,” “Network,” “The China Syndrome,” “The Electric Horseman,” “Act of Violence,” “First, You Cry.” Part Two – Lois Lane Montage.
CLASS EIGHT: Midterm Examination (October 15)
CLASS NINE: THE 1980s. MARY RICHARDS AND MURPHY BROWN. TELEVISION REPORTERS IN JEOPARDY. MAGAZINE JOURNALISTS. COLUMNISTS (October 22)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Ten
Film Excerpts include: Part One – “Absence of Malice,” “Broadcast News,” “Margaret Bourke-White.” Part Two – “Mary Tyler Moore” montage and “Murphy Brown” montage. Part Three – Magazine Journalists: “A Bunny’s Tale,” “Her Life as a Man,” “Anything But Love,” “A Good Sport.” Part Four - Columnists: “Malice in Wonderland,” “Warm Hearts, Cold Feet.” Part Five – TV Reporters in Jeopardy: “Eyewitness,” “Stillwatch,” “The Seduction,” “Eyes of a Stranger,” “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Visiting Hours,” “Year of the Dragon.”
CLASS TEN: TV REPORTERS; GALE GAYLEY AND JESSICA SAVITCH (October 29)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Eleven
Film: “Hero” and “Almost Golden”
CLASS ELEVEN: TALLY ATWATER (November 5)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Twelve.
Film: “Up Close and Personal”
Book Review Due - November 5
CLASS TWELVE: MARY SUNSHINE. ADVICE COLUMNISTS. EDITOR ALICIA CLARK (November 12)
Required Reading: Syllabus – Class Thirteen. Capra Book: Lulu Smith, Pp. 61-67. Al Holland, Pp. 103-108.
Film Excerpts include: Part One – Mary Sunshine Montage: “Forbidden,” “Roxie Hart,” and “Chicago.” Part Two: “Take My Advice: The Ann and Abby Story,” “Night Court” Advice Columnists. Part Three: “The Paper”
CLASS THIRTEEN: VERONICA GUERIN AND SINEAD HAMILTON (November 19)
Films: “Veronica Guerin” and “When the Sky Falls”
CLASS FOURTEEN: REVIEW (November 26)
CLASS FIFTEEN: IN-CLASS FINAL EXAMINATION (December 3)
ALTERNATIVE FINAL EXAMINATION: Friday, December 12, 2 to 4 p.m.
THE BOOK REPORT
Each student must select a book (or books) featuring a female journalist from either the list of authors and books below, or a book (s) of your choice. Most of these books can be found on the Internet (especially E-Bay) and many are still available at local bookstores.
The final book report must include the following:
• A profile of the female journalist(s) featured in the book including a brief biography put together from information included in the book (age, physical appearance, likes, dislikes, family background, social life, professional life, etc.).
• A very brief summary of the plot. Plot summary should only be relevant to the female journalist(s) involved, and not just a recitation of what happened.
• A discussion of how this character(s) fits in with the general image of the female journalist in popular culture as described in class. Describe the image of this particular female journalist and how it fits in with the historical image of the female journalist in popular culture. Discuss the pros and cons of the image and what it contributes to the public understanding of journalism and the female journalist.
The paper should be typed and double-spaced without any mistakes in grammar, spelling or style (use the Chicago Manual of Style). It must NOT BE FEWER than five pages and NOT MORE than 15 pages. It should reflect what you’ve learned in class and in your readings.
You may choose any book featuring a female journalist (with proper approval), but here is a list of some possibilities:
Jo Bannister
The Primrose Switchback (2000), The Primrose Convention (1998)
Mildred Wirt Benson
Between the Lines (1996), The Nicest Guy in America (1997)
Venise T. Berry
All of Me: A Voluptuous Tale (2001)
Clair Blank
Series of books featuring Beverly Gray
Edna Buchanan
Series of books featuring Britt Montero
Jan Burke
Series of books featuring Irene Kelly
Carol Cail
Series of books featuring Maxey Burnell
Mary Jane Clark
Close to You (2001)
Susan Conant
Series of books featuring Holly Winter
Catherine Coulter
Blowout (2004), Impulse (1990)
Barbara D’Amato
Series of books featuring Cat Marsala
Mary Daheim
Series of books featuring Emma Lord
Carola Dunn
Series of books featuring Daisy Dalrymple
Sylvia Edwards
Series of books featuring Sally Baxter
Tony Fennelly
Series of books featuring Margot Fortier
Antonia Fraser
Series of books featuring Jemima Shore
Hal Friedman
A Hunting We Will Go (1997)
Mickey Friedman
Series of books featuring Georgia Lee Maxwell
Alison Glen
Series of books featuring Charlotte Sams
Alison Gordon
Series of books featuring Kate Henry
Lesley Grant-Adamson
Series of books featuring Rain Morgan
Winston Groom
Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl (1999)
Lisa Haddock
Series of books featuring Carmen Ramirez
Patricia Hall
Series of books featuring Laura Ackroyd
Denise Hamilton
Series of books featuring Eve Diamond
Carolyn Hart
Series of books featuring Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins
Sparkle Hayter
What’s a Girl Gotta Do? (1994), Nice Girls Finish Last (1996), Revenge of the Cootie
Girls (1997), The Last Manly Man (1998), The Chelsea Girl Murders (2000)
Jean Heller
Handyman (1995)
Joan Hess
Series of books featuring Claire Malloy
Wendy Hornsby
Series of books featuring Maggie MacGowen
Eleanor Hyde
Series of books featuring Lydia Miller
Jody Jaffe
Series of books featuring Natalie Gold
Yolanda Joe
This Just In… (2000)
Jeannine Kadow
Burnout (1999), Dead Tide (2002)
Kelly Lange
Series of books featuring Maxi Poole
Constance Laux
Diamonds and Desire (2000)
Ellen Larson
Series of books featuring Natalie Joday
Deborah Lawrenson
Idol Chatter (1996)
Jane Leavy
Squeeze Play (1990)
Jan Ledfdord
The Cloning (2002)
Fiona Lewis
Between Men: A Novel (1995)
Cathie Linz
Sleeping Beauty and the Marine (2003)
Laura Lippman
Series of books featuring Tess Monaghan
Emily Listfield
The Last Good Night (1997)
Harold Livingston
To Die in Babylon (1993)
Vicki P. McConnell
Mrs. Porter’s Letter (1982), The Burnton Windows (1983), Double Daughter (1988)
Val McDermid
Report for Murder (1987), Common Murder (1989), Final Edition (1991), Union Jack,(1993). Deadline for Murder and Booked for Murder (1996). Conferences Are Murder (1999)
Claudia McKay
The Kali Connection (1994)
Molly McKitterick
Murder in a Mayonnaise Jar (1993)
Franci McMahon
Night Mare: A Mystery (2001)
Leslie Meier
Series of books featuring Lucy Stone
Carlene Miller
Killing at the Cat (1998), Mayhem at the Marina (1999), Reporter on the Run (2001)
Ron Nessen and Johanna Neuman
Series of books featuring Jane Day
Meg O’Brien
Series of books featuring Jessica James
David Osborn
Series of books featuring Margaret Barlow
Joanne Pence
Series of books featuring Angelina Amalfi
Audrey Peterson
Series of books featuring Jane Winfield
Anna Porter
Series of books featuring Judith Hayes
Gayle Roper
Series of books featuring Merry Kramer
Jane Rubino
Series of books featuring Cat Austen
Diane Salvatore
Love, Zena Beth (1992)
Eve K. Sandstrom
Series of books featuring Nell Matthews
Sarah Shankman
Series of books featuring Samantha Adams
Sidney Sheldon
The Sky Is Falling (2000), The Best Laid Plans1998)
Celestine Sibley
Series of books featuring Kate Mulcay
Barbara Burnett Smith
Series of books featuring Jolie Wyatt
Julie Smith
Series of books featuring Rebecca Schwartz
Danielle Steel
Journey (2000), No Greater Love (1991), Bittersweet (1999), Mirror Image (1999),
Message from Nam (1990), Changes (1983), Passion’s Promise (1976), Changes (1990)
Triss Stein
Series of books featuring Kay Engles
Barbara Bradford Taylor
Dangerous to Know (1995), Remember (1994), A Secret Affair (1998)
Elaine Viets
Series of books featuring Francesca Vierling
Mary Willis Walker
Series of books featuring Mollie Cates
Penny Warner
Series of books featuring Conner Westphal
EVALUATION OF BOOK REPORT
The assignment is evaluated based on the criteria listed below. The overall quality and connections made to class discussions and material are also considered.
Content:
• Profile of Female Journalist including Biography
/ 80 Points
• How Character Fits with General Image of the Female Journalist in Popular Culture
/ 40 Points
• How Character Fits with Historical Image of the Female Journalist in Popular Culture
/ 40 Points
• Pros and Cons of the Image Presented
/ 40 Points
• Contributions to Public Understanding of Journalism and the Female Journalist
/ 40 points
Total Content: ________/240 points_
Presentation:
• Format
/ 20 Points
• Spelling/ Grammar
/ 20 Points
• Proper Citation
/ 20 Points
Total Presentation: _____/60 points _
TOTAL SCORE: ______/300 points_
COURSE READINGS
There are two textbooks for the class.
Your syllabus-course reader is a textbook. Bring it to class each week.
The second textbook is Frank Capra and The Image of the Journalist in American Film, a publication of The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC), a project of the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg. It was written by Joe Saltzman and is available at the USC Bookstore.
The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC), a project of the Norman Lear Center, has a Web site that has valuable information for the class – . It includes the relevant essay, “Sob Sisters: The Image of the Female Journalist in Popular Culture,” written by Joe Saltzman, director of the IJPC, and reprinted in this course reader. It is required reading.
In addition, these books are recommended:
Good, Howard, Girl Reporter: Gender, Journalism and Movies, Scarecrow Press. Published: May, 1998.
Ness, Richard R., From Headline Hunter to Superman: A Journalism Filmography, Scarecrow Press. Published: October 7, 1997. A guide to more than 2,100 feature films dealing with journalism. An excellent resource.
THE INSTRUCTOR
Joe Saltzman has been a prolific print and electronic journalist for 45 years. He created the broadcasting sequence for the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California in 1974. He has taught for nearly 40 years, is a tenured professor at USC and the winner of several teaching awards, including the USC Associates Teaching Excellence Award. He is currently the Director of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture, a project of the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg, and a former associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication.
Before coming to USC, Saltzman was a senior writer-producer at CBS, Channel 2, in Los Angeles. His documentaries and news specials have won more than 50 awards including the
Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism (broadcasting’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), two Edward R. Murrow Awards for reporting, five Emmys and four Golden Mike awards. Saltzman is listed in Who’s Who in America, the International Who’s Who in Literature, Who’s Who in California, Who’s Who in the West, Who’s Who in Education and International Biography.
SOB SISTERS:
THE IMAGE OF THE FEMALE JOURNALIST
IN POPULAR CULTURE(
By Joe Saltzman
Director, Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC)
( Joe Saltzman 2003
The Image of the Female Journalist in Popular Culture revolves around a dichotomy never quite resolved. The female journalist faces an ongoing dilemma: How to incorporate the masculine traits of journalism essential for success – being aggressive, self-reliant, curious, tough, ambitious, cynical, cocky, unsympathetic – while still being the woman society would like her to be – compassionate, caring, loving, maternal, sympathetic. Female reporters and editors in fiction have fought to overcome this central contradiction throughout the 20th century and are still fighting the battle today.
Not much early fiction featured newswomen. Before 1880, there were few newspaperwomen and only about five novels written about them.[?] Some real-life newswomen were well known – Margaret Fuller, Nelly Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane), Annie Laurie (Winifred Sweet or Winifred Black), Jennie June (Jane Cunningham Croly) – but most female journalists were not permitted to write on important topics. Front-page assignments, politics, finance and sports were not usually given to women. Top newsroom positions were for men only. Novels and short stories of Victorian America offered the prejudices of the day: Newspaper work, like most work outside the home, was for men only. Women were supposed to marry, have children and stay home. To become a journalist, women had to have a good excuse – perhaps a dead husband and starving children. Those who did write articles from home kept it to themselves. Few admitted they wrote for a living. Women who tried to have both marriage and a career flirted with disaster.[?]
The professional woman of the period was usually educated, single, and middle or upper class. One historian writes of the successful female journalist of the 1890s: “In the world of modern wild-cat journalism the woman reporter lasts about four years. She brings her education, her personal attractions, her youth, her illusions, her energy, her ambition, and her enthusiasm to the encounter, and the first year she rises rapidly. The second and third years she enjoys the zenith of her popularity; with the fourth year she begins the descent, lingers about the horizon for a time, and then she disappears from view. There is no vocation into which women have entered where [?]disillusions materialize so rapidly as they do in journalism.”[?] Most women quit their jobs when they married, and found fulfillment as a woman by being a wife and mother.[?]
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.[?] But during the last 20 years of the 19th century, there were no more than 10 novels written about women journalists[?] and few chronicled women working as printers, freelance contributors, book reviewers, columnists, travel and fashion writers, crime reporters and editors. The 1900 census recorded 2,193 women in journalism, 7.3 percent of the profession.[?] 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. Historian Donna Born writes that the woman journalist in fiction at the turn of the century is “single and young, attractive, independent, reliable, courageous, competent, curious, determined, economically self-supporting, professional and compassionate.”[?] Most female journalists in fiction ended up in marriages or disillusioned, or both. Critics of the time conceded that most of the novels written about journalism were written by men and women “who have worked in newspaper offices at one time or another.” Because of this, they could not understand why few revealed the “journalistic sphere in its true light.” Most deplored the “fiction type of women particularly,” since women “hardly can be said to flock into newspaper offices.” [?]
Even before the movies could talk, it became clear that female reporters were perfect for film.[?] Motion pictures offered the meatiest roles for female actors and created the perfect battleground of the sexes: the underrated girl reporter could prove she was as capable as the male, and the boy reporter could gloat that no girl could possibly keep pace with him. The sob sister became a popular newspaper heroine.[?]
Hollywood’s female reporters, as one newspaperman put it, “did more glamorous work than most of those who toiled on real papers. Too often, young female reporters, even on big city papers have been confined to covering ‘social’ news, ‘women's page’ features, and the like. There have been notable exceptions…but for every widely known female reporter who gets to cover top stories there have undoubtedly been thousands who spent most of their working lives at weddings, social events, interviewing outstanding mothers, listening to luncheon-club lecturers or otherwise helping to fill those pages that editors know their female readers turn to habitually.”[?]
Editors used female reporters to cover the human angle or color sidebar of a story. “If somebody accused of a crime happened to be a woman, a female reporter might be assigned to play up the emotional aspects of the story. Or, if the accused was a man, he might have a wife, girl friend or mother” whom the female reporter could interview and play up any heart-tugging angles, any emotional aspect of the story. “What they wrote came to be referred to as sob stories” and female reporters came to be known, at least in the movies, as sob sisters. Few newspaper people remember female reporters being called sob sisters in the city room. [?]
Pioneer female journalist Ishbel Ross tells a story about the origin of the term sob sister that has been picked up by many commentators. She claims the derogatory name dates from the 1907 trial of millionaire Harry K. Thaw who was accused of killing architect Stanford White for being his wife’s lover. Four female journalists covered the trial – Ada Patterson, Dorothy Dix, Winifred Black and Nixola Greeley-Smith. Male reporters believed that the only reason the four women reporters were there was to give the woman’s point of view, accusing them of sympathizing with the adulterous wife, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. One male seeing the four at the press table, nicknamed them “sob sisters” and the name stuck.[?] Journalism historian Howard Good sums up how female journalists felt about the name: “Most women reporters resented this label because it reinforced the stereotype of women as big-hearted but soft-minded, emotionally generous but intellectually sloppy.”[?] Slang dictionaries date the term to about 1925, defining a sob sister as “a woman news reporter who appeals to readers’ sympathies with her accounts of pathetic happenings.”[?]
The early decades of the 20th century “brought an increasingly self-confident newswoman to comic strips, movies, short stories, and novels.”[?] Especially in the movies, women reporters were independent, hard-boiled dames ready and willing to do anything their male counterparts would do to get a story. This creates the dichotomy faced by most women in fiction at the turn of the century – maintaining their compassionate, feminine nature as defined by the times while still exhibiting the so-called masculine traits of journalism considered essential for a successful reporter or editor.[?]
The sob sister always has to prove herself. She has to persuade the males around her that she is worthy of their respect.[?] She often screws up before winning her stripes, but, by and large, she is an independent, hardworking reporter who never lets her newspaper down. As historian Deac Rossell points out, “By the 1920s, newspapering was firmly established as a genre where women could take the leading roles, the active and successful parts, as well as men…Where women had been typically the love object, or the dramatic and emotional catalyst between male leads in most films, here she could have a job, move independently through society, be a leader. All without necessarily endangering her femininity or being typed as man-less.”[?]
Occasionally, the sob sister shows signs of feminine frailty. Most female reporters eventually need rescuing by the most available male. But more often than not, she outwits, outfoxes, and outreports every male reporter in sight. Only then does she become one of the guys. The highest compliment you can pay a female journalist is to call her “a newspaperman.” Film critic Pauline Kael maintains that talkies about girl reporters were almost all based on the most highly publicized female reporter of the time, Hearst's Adela Rogers St. Johns. In His Girl Friday (1940), a superior remake of The Front Page (1931), the male reporter, Hildy Johnson, becomes a female. Rosalind Russell as Hildy was so obviously playing St. Johns, writes Kael, “that she was dressed in an imitation of the St. Johns’ girl-reporter striped suit.”[?]
The most dominant female film reporter of the 1930s, Torchy Blane,[?] was played by everyone’s notion of what a female reporter looked and sounded like – the fast-talking Glenda Farrell. No one else in films better epitomized the aggressive, self-assured, independent female reporter.[?] One reason for this may have been that the Torchy Blane character was originally a male reporter named Kennedy, the hero of a series of pulp magazine stories by Frederick Nebel.[?] In the movies, Blane went after fast-breaking, sensational stories as aggressively as any newsman. Her scoops were usually in print before her male counterparts figured out what was going on. She was no sob sister, no gushy old maid, no masculine-looking lady, “no society dame after the woman's angle,” as one critic put it. “She was an honest to goodness pencil pusher who scrambled for her story along with the so-called stronger sex – and got it.”[?]
The popularity of this series was mostly due to Farrell’s performance as the brassy female reporter. Farrell told one interviewer that the cinematic sob sisters “were caricatures of newspaperwomen as I knew them. So before I undertook to do the first Torchy, I determined to create a real human being – and not an exaggerated comedy type.” She said that when she visited New York City, she watched female journalists work and she met with them whenever they visited Hollywood. “They were generally young, intelligent, refined, and attractive. By making Torchy true to life, I tried to create a character practically unique in movies.”[?]
Male screenwriters, perhaps worried that these sob sisters were too independent and too feisty for the times, would make sure that by the final reel, these self-sufficient females would succumb to love, longing for what 1930s audiences were sure every woman really wanted – a man, marriage, and children. No matter how strong the female reporter was throughout the film, she, like Torchy Blane, would hope for matrimony with the most available man. The question wasn't how could Torchy Blane care about a numskull policeman like Steve McLane. The situation was that in the 1930s, she really had no choice.[?]
In real life, the phrase sob sister wasn’t popularized until the movies used it. It summed up the dichotomy of the movie female reporter. She was considered an equal by doing a man’s work, a career woman drinking and arguing toe-to-toe with any male in the shop, and holding her own against everyone. Yet this tough reporter often showed her soft side and cried long and hard when the man she loved treated her like a sister instead of a lover. By the end of the film, most sob sisters, no matter how tough or independent during the film, would give up anything for marriage, children, and a life at home. Female moviegoers understood this massive contradiction. They loved the way the woman gave it to the man throughout the film, but they didn’t trust any woman who didn’t put family and children above a career. So it didn’t seem unusual to them if the woman made a 180-degree turnabout at the end of the film. That was the natural order of things, and she didn’t have any choice. In fact, she shouldn’t have wanted any choice.
In the 1930s, sob sisters also underwent a form of masculinization, adopting male-associated names and ways of dressing designed to downplay their femininity that made them look more like one of the boys. Women rarely became editors or publishers, but as reporters and columnists they more than held their own against their male counterparts.
For female actors, reporter roles gave them a chance to be top dog in a man’s world and they jumped at it. Practically every major actress of the period showed up in tailored coat and pants to fight the males in the newsroom, to assert her individualism and independence – at least until the final reel – and to become one of the few positive role models working outside the home.[?] Brenda Starr and Lois Lane, beautiful, intelligent, successful professionals, starred in their own comics. When they moved from newspaper comic strips to movies, they maintained their independent newshawk credentials while pining away for powerful men beyond their control.
During the 1940s, female journalists were complimented for filling the jobs left by men who went to war. Historian Donna Born writes, “The need for women workers to replace men at war caused an overnight change in the cultural attitudes against working women, and the cultural stereotype of women as weak and incompetent changed to that of strong women filling ‘man-sized’ jobs.”[?]
Female journalists in fiction during the 1940s are either portrayed as isolated super-professional journalists able to do any job perfectly or they are relegated to following orders from men because they are still female and thus unreliable – “irrational, temperamental, prone to trouble, and dependent on a man either for protection and support or for self-fulfillment.”[?]
After the war, it was business as usual. Women belonged in the home as matriarchs of the nuclear family. Images of the female journalist in popular culture showed women, usually single, as reporters, feature writers, and society page editors, still trying to reconcile their journalism with their womanhood. They still tried to find a satisfactory compromise between two stereotypes – their feminine qualities of compassion, passiveness, sensitivity, and caring and the masculine qualities of ambition and ruthlessness (“I’ll do anything to get that story.”). Beauty and sex turned out to be weapons females used to gain an advantage in the media marketplace, “the competent but bad woman for whom sex is a means to further her ambition.”[?]
Most female journalists portrayed in popular culture are seldom shown as fully developed human beings.[?] As historian-journalist Loren Ghiglione puts it, “The contemporary newswoman, while regularly cast as a tough, talented pro, often bears the burden of being depicted as an emotionally empty Super Bitch or Super Whore.”[?]
The 21st-century images aren’t all that different from the images of the sob sisters of the past – if a woman is successful, it means she has assumed many of the characteristics of the newsman, losing her femininity in the process. Or, in most cases, she stays tantalizingly female and uses her womanliness to get to the top. It’s still mostly a no-win situation. For every positive image of a successful female journalist in film, TV, novels and short stories, there are a dozen stereotypical clichés – the male reporter saving the inept female reporter, the ravishing female doing whatever it takes to get the story, the tough editor or publisher who is miserable because she has given up what she wants most – the love of a good man and children.
In fiction of the late 20th century and the early 21st century, the most popular female journalist is usually more of a detective solving a crime than a reporter. The savvy reporter or columnist who captures the murderer before anyone else often stars in her own series of mystery novels.[?] And it’s a varied group composed of newspaper publishers and owners; investigative and crime reporters from Toronto, London, Georgia, Oregon, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York; television and radio reporters; gossip and food columnists; sports writers and even a writer for Dog’s Life; documentarians and journalism teachers. Some of the female journalists are so strong and independent that they are reluctant to admit that they are lesbians. Often their sexual preference figures strongly in both plot and character.[?]
TV anchors and reporters prove irresistible to many writers in fiction,[?] movies and
TV[?] – the females are either depicted as gorgeous blond airheads who sometimes sleep their way to the top or tough-minded women working in an all-male environment trying to prove their worth as reporters and not to be seen as sex objects. Often the veteran female news anchor is threatened by a younger woman who is after her job.[?] The greatest stereotype of the image of the female journalist in popular culture, and the most ridiculed, is the TV reporter-anchorwoman.
Ironically enough, the two most positive images of the journalist in popular culture turn out to be women – Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) in Murphy Brown (1988-1998). Richards starts out as the insecure cub reporter-type working as an associate producer in the Minneapolis WJM-TV newsroom and by the end of the series becomes a self-assured professional ready to move on to bigger things affirmed by Mary and Rhoda, the 2000 TV movie updating her fictional history.[?]
Murphy Brown is the old-fashioned reporter who doesn’t let anything get in the way of her story or her work as a journalist. She works hard, loves hard, drinks hard, and smokes one cigarette after another. While this is acceptable behavior for 1930s and 1940s reporters, this kind of obsessive behavior is not acceptable in the 1980s. In the first episode, Murphy Brown
repents – she stops drinking and smoking. But she won't let go of the passion that makes her one of the most successful TV reporters in the business and a role model for thousands of women.
Brown is the sharp-tongued network reporter for the live TV newsmagazine FYI, based in Washington, D.C. According to her resume, Murphy got her job at FYI in 1977, the year Mary Richards was fired from WJM and the same year her boss, Lou Grant took over as city editor for the Los Angeles Tribune in The Lou Grant TV series. A fast-talking professional in 1988, Brown doesn’t give an inch in her fight to control the TV newsmagazine environment in which she works. In 10 years, she becomes sober, gives birth to an illegitimate child,[?] survives breast cancer and remains at the top of her profession. Few female journalists in popular culture could match Brown’s professionalism and authority. She never compromised herself or her principles and mixed it up with real and imaginary journalists on an equal basis.
Murphy Brown obliterates the fine line between reality and fiction. In one Murphy Brown episode, Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud), FYI’s executive producer, gets angry at Brown and yells at her: “Let me remind you about something, Murphy. This is a job, not make-believe. We're not doing The Mary Tyler Moore Show here. There's no audience laughing at every cute little thing you say. This is the real world. So when I tell you you're doing a story, you just don't say, ‘Oh, Mr. Grant, I don't want to. You do it!’” The point is clear: Murphy Brown lives in the real world, not the world of TV sitcoms. Real journalists are frequent guests and they talk to Murphy as if she is their equal. Away from the television program, Murphy Brown is treated in the media as if she really exists outside of Candice Bergen’s persona. And when Vice President Dan Quayle got into a national debate over single mothers with Murphy Brown, reality and fiction became inseparable. Practically every major broadcast journalist appeared on the program during its decade-long run – all of the 60 Minutes correspondents, every major female news reporter and anchor in the business including Linda Ellerbee, Katie Couric, Joan Lunden, Faith Baldwin, Mary Alice Walker, Paula Zahn, Leslie Stahl and Connie Chung,[?] broadcast veterans Charles Kuralt and Walter Cronkite. And when Murphy greets them on camera, it is as if they are old and valued friends. Not only do real-life journalists treat Murphy as an equal, but politicians from both parties also show up to talk with her and about her. If they all accept Murphy as a real-life counterpart, then who is the audience to deny her existence?
Murphy Brown is the image of the sob-sister-now-celebrity-journalist that dominates the final decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Yet, for many sob sisters there is a bittersweet aftertaste of giving up a bit too much to achieve this equality with males. After all, the image of the male journalist in popular culture was never that appealing to most people, never much of a complete life with domestic comforts and achievements. Most journalists in fiction lead a rather unappealing, self-centered existence filled with deadlines, alcohol, danger, loneliness, lies and distortions, bitter frustrations and either an exciting death on assignment or a sad end to a long career filled with broken dreams and endless what-might-have-beens. Successful female journalists end up with nothing less than the male journalist’s present successes and failures, and future nightmares.
Female and male journalists, reaching a kind of equality and truce in the battle of the sexes, find themselves in fiction wondering if a lifetime filled with the daily stress and pressure of getting the story and getting it fast and right was worth it. Does any journalist currently knocking out newspaper, magazine and TV news stories really want to do that for the rest of his or her life? Or wouldn’t most journalists rather be writing novels or movie and TV scripts or non-fiction books?
The age-old dilemma of a career in journalism vs. a private life with family seems to still be unresolved since most successful journalists find that the only way to be a success is to work at it 24 hours a day, leaving little or no time for personal relationships, marriage, parenting, or anything else that takes time from the seemingly unending professional work.
Many sob sisters have won equality in both image and achievement, but at what cost? At the end of a long day or even worse, a long career, does anyone really want to be Hildy Johnson chasing after one more story or Lois Lane crying her eyes out because the person she loves is out saving the world and doesn’t have time for domestic tranquility or Mary Richards, widowed and penniless, trying at the age of 60 to make one more comeback in television news, or Murphy Brown raising a child and battling breast cancer while still holding on to her number one position in TV news, a position any young sob sister or brother would be eager to take away from her?
The images of female sob sisters and male newshounds may differ in particulars, but in the end, they are among the most exciting as well as depressing characters in fiction today.
THE SOB SISTER ON FILM: INTRODUCTION
Women who worked on newspapers in films did more glamorous work than most of those who worked on real papers. Too often young female reporters on big city papers were confined to covering social news and women’s page features. There were notable exceptions. But for every well known female reporter who got to cover top stories, there were thousands who spent most of their working lives covering weddings, social events, interviewing outstanding mothers, listening to luncheon-club lecturers or otherwise helping to fill those pages that editors were convinced women were turning to every day.
Editors used female reporters to cover the human or color sidebar of a story. If somebody accused of a crime happened to be a woman, a female reporter would be assigned to play up the emotional aspects of the story. Or if the accused was a man, he might have a wife or a girlfriend or mother that the female reporter could interview, playing up any heart-tugging angles, any emotional aspects of the story. What they wrote came to be referred to as sob stories and female reporters came to be known, at least in the movies, as sob sisters.
Even in silent movies, women found a curious independence in newspaper films.
A film made in 1911, The Reform Candidate, featured a feisty female reporter whom one contemporary critic praised “as the sort who has to fight her way instead of having it prepared for her. She’s the kind of up-to-date heroine that American audiences admire more than the clinging vine variety.”
In the 1913 film, Her Big Story, a woman journalist uncovers the real power behind the mayor who, ironically, is also the owner of the newspaper for which she works.
In 1915, How Mollie Made Good, told the story of a young Irish girl who is given an assignment to see if she can make it as a reporter. She pursues the story by car, bus and airplane, is involved in a train wreck, subdues a pickpocket, eludes a vicious dog, and gets drenched in a rain shower. She finally gets the story and her reward is $50, a job and the love of a handsome, young associate editor.
In 1916, women journalists were the ones to expose crooks as well as capture counterfeiters in a film called Perils of Our Girl Reporters. From the beginning, women “were independent, hard-boiled dames ready and willing to do anything their male counterpart would do to get that story.” The Sob Sister became popular.
Female reporters were perfect for the movies. They offered the meatiest roles for female actors, and with male reporters they created the perfect battleground of the sexes – the underrated girl reporter challenged to prove she’s as capable as the male, and the boy reporter confident that no girl could possibly keep pace with him. It was a marriage made in heaven and movies discovered it immediately.
CLASS ONE NOTES
A sampling of some of the material in the video “Sob Sisters: The Image of the Female Journalist in Popular Culture, 1929-2003”:
City editor (Purnell Pratt) to Bonnie Jordan (Joan Crawford): “Is this all of it?” Jordan: “Yes, but I could write some more.” Editor: “There's your story in the first three paragraphs. You can have the rest of it.”
-- Dance, Fools, Dance, 1931
Walter Burns (Cary Grant) to Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell): “You can’t quit. You're a newspaperman.” Hildy: “That's why I'm quitting. I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.”
-- His Girl Friday, 1940.
Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell) sitting in car. Her boyfriend, the police detective, tells her: “No, you wait here. This rat hole is no place for a woman.” Blane: “But I'm a newspaperman.” Police Detective: “You just sit quiet and maybe nobody will notice it.”
-- Torchy Blane, 1939
Ella Garfield (Bette Davis) to Curt Devlin (George Brent): “I'm a reporter.” Devlin: “No, you're not. You're just a sweet little kid whose family allowed her to read too many newspaper novels.” Garfield: “You make me so mad I could spit.”
-- Front Page Woman, 1935
Bill Moran (Pat O’Brien), the editor, is yelling at his reporter, Timmy Blake (Joan Blondell): “Our policy is that she’s guilty.” Blake: “How many times have I been wrong when I have a hunch?” Moran: “You’ve gone soft on me. What kind of a newspaperwoman are you?” Blake: “My job is to tell the truth.” Moran: “Your job is to write what I tell you to write.” Blake: “Not this time.”
-- Back in Circulation, 1937
Editor Mac Wade (George Bancroft) to his ace reporter-sob sister Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur ): “What’s gotten into you, Babe? I remember the time when you would blast this town wide open.” Bennett: “Oh, he’s not getting away with anything.” Mac Wade: “Listen Babe, get me some stuff on this guy.” Bennett: “Can I have a month's vacation with pay?” Mac Wade: “With pay.” Bennett: “Leave four columns open on the front page, tomorrow.” Mac Wade: “Now you’re talking, Babe. I'll keep the whole front page open.”
-- Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, 1936
Claudette Colbert is distinguished foreign correspondent Augusta Nash, who is toasted by her lover: “Here’s to Augusta Nash, career woman, foreign correspondent extraordinaire, ace of newshawks, queen of headlines.”
-- Arise My Love, 1940
Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), just-fired reporter telling off the new managing editor Henry Connell (James Gleason): “Listen, you great big wonderful genius of a newspaperman. You came down here to shoot some life into this dying paper, didn’t you? Well, the whole town is curious about John Doe and boom, just like that you’re going to bury it. There’s enough circulation in that man to start a shortage in the ink market.”
-- Meet John Doe, 1941
Clark Kent to sob sister Lois Lane: “...this is the one time I scooped you, Lois.” Lois: “Yes, lucky for you I was hurt.”
-- Superman Cartoon, 1941
Female cub reporter Jan Price talking to Sam Gatlin (Jack Webb), the night editor of the Los Angeles Examiner: “Gee, after all my big-mouth talk, what happens if I can't handle a story?” Gatlin: “Well, in that case, sweetheart, you get your pretty little hide tacked up right in the lobby of the men's room. Come on relax, you’ll get all the help you’ll need from here on in. We’ve all been through the shakes of a first big assignment.” Later, Gatlin to cub reporter: “I've gone over your story. You're going to lose a paragraph.” Cub: “I’m sorry I tried to keep the adjectives down.” Gatlin: “Now, look Debbie Reynolds, on this newspaper when you lose only one paragraph, that’s all the same as getting a bronze star. You came up with a good angle here and you seem to know your way around a typewriter. Well, Sis, you asked for a chance and you picked the right night.”
-- –30- 1959
Lou Grant (Ed Asner) talking to his new associate producer Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore): “You know what? You've got spunk.” Richards: “Well, yes….” Grant: “I hate spunk.”
-- The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 1970-1977
Jimmy Olson (Marc McClure) asks Lois Lane (Margot Kidder): “How come you get all the good stories.” She tells him as she goes into Perry White’s office as Editor White (Jackie Cooper) finishes her sentence. She then shows him her story. He glances at it and says: “There’s only one “p” in rapist.”
-- Superman, The Movie, 1978
Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), the top female news producer to the top male executive: “I think it’s my responsibility to tell you that.” Executive: “OK, that's your opinion.” Craig: “I don't agree. It's not opinion.” Executive: “You're just absolutely right and I'm absolutely wrong. It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.” Craig: “No, it's awful….”
-- Broadcast News, 1987
Executive Producer Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud) to Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen): “Let me remind you about something, Murphy. This is a job, not make believe, we’re not doing The Mary Tyler Moore Show here. There’s no audience laughing at every cute little thing you say. This is the real world. So when I tell you you’re doing a story, you just don’t say, “Oh Mr. Grant, I don’t want to.’ You do it.”
-- Murphy Brown, 1988-1998
CLASS TWO: THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWSPAPER FILM – THE 1930s – SOB SISTERS VIEWING NOTES
1937 SOS COAST GUARD
Maxine Doyle is Jean Norman, reporter, Chronicle
Lee Ford is Snapper McGee, photographer-picture snatcher, Chronicle
1936 THE UNDERSEA KINGDOM
Lois Wilde is Diana Compton, staff writer, Times
1935 FRONT PAGE WOMAN
Bette Davis is Ellen Garfield, reporter, Daily Star
George Brent is Curt Devlin, reporter, Daily Express
1936 WE’RE ONLY HUMAN
Jane Wyatt is Sally Rogers, cub reporter, New York Star
1939 THE ADVENTURES OF JANE ARDEN
Rosella Towne is Jane Arden, reporter, New York World Mirror
William Gargan is Ed Towers, managing editor, New York World Mirror
Dennie Moore is Teenie Moore, advice-to-the-lovelorn editor, World Mirror
1933 THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM
Glenda Farrell is Florence Dempsy, reporter, New York Express
Frank McHugh is Jim, editor, New York Express
1939 SMART BLONDE – TORCHY BLANE
Glenda Farrell is Torchy Blane, reporter, Morning Herald
1937 FLY AWAY BABY – TORCHY BLANE
Glenda Farrell is Torchy Blane, reporter, Morning Herald
Gordon Oliver is Sonny Croy, son of publisher, Star-Telegram
Hugh O’Connell is Hughie Sprague, reporter, Daily Journal
1938 BLONDES AT WORK – TORCHY BLANE
Glenda Farrell is Torchy Blane, reporter, The Daily Star
1939 TORCHY RUNS FOR MAYOR – TORCHY BLANE
Glenda Farrell is Torchy Blane, reporter, The Daily Star
1939 TORCHY PLAYS WITH DYNAMITE – TORCHY BLANE
Jane Wyman is Torchy Blane, reporter, The Daily Star
Joe Cunningham is Maxie Monkhouse, city editor, The Daily Star
1939 NANCY DREW REPORTER
Bonita Granville is Nancy Drew, cub reporter, Tribune
1930 CONSPIRACY
Hugh Trevor is John Howell, reporter-“sob sister,” Evening Journal
Ned Sparks is Winthrop “Little Nemo” Clavering, reporter-detective
Jane Keckly is Rose Towne, former sob sister
CLASS THREE: FRONT PAGE FEMALE REPORTERS VIEWING NOTES
1931 PLATINUM BLOND
Loretta Young is Gallagher, reporter
Robert Williams is Stew Smith, reporter turned novelist
Walter Catlett is Binjy Baker, reporter, The Tribune
Edmund Breese is Conray, managing editor
1937 BACK IN CIRCULATION
Joan Blondell is Timmy Blake, reporter, Morning Express
Pat O’Brien is Bill Morgan, city editor, Morning Express
Regis Toomey is Buck, photographer, Morning Express
Craig Reynolds is Snoop Davis, reporter, Chronicle
1937 THERE GOES MY GIRL
Ann Sothern is Connie Taylor, reporter
Richard Lane is Tim Whalen, managing editor
Gene Raymond is Jerry Martin, rival reporter
1940 HIS GIRL FRIDAY
Rosalind Russell is Hildy Johnson, reporter
Cary Grant is Walter Burns, editor
1987 SWITCHING CHANNELS
Kathleen Turner is Christine Colleran, TV reporter-anchor
Burt Reynolds is Sully, the news director
CLASS FOUR: BABE BENNETT VIEWING NOTES
1936 MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN
Jean Arthur is Louise “Babe” Bennett, reporter
George Bancroft is MacWade, editor
Lionel Stander is Cornelius Cobb, public relations man
2002 MR. DEEDS
Winona Ryder is Louise “Babe” Bennett, Tabloid TV Journalist for Inside Access
Jared Harris is Mac McGrath, Host-Executive Producer of Tabloid show, Inside Access
Allen Covert is Marty, Undercover Reporter for Inside Access.
CLASS FIVE: THE 1940s and THE 1950s VIEWING NOTES
THE 1940s
1940 ARISE MY LOVE
Claudette Colbert is Augusta Nash, foreign correspondent, Associated News
Walter Abel is Phillips, European head, Associated News
1945 CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT
Barbara Stanwyck is Elizabeth Lane, columnist, Smart Housekeeping magazine
Sidney Greenstreet is Alexander Yardley, publisher, Smart Housekeeping magazine
1948 JUNE BRIDE
Robert Montgomery is Cary Jackson, foreign correspondent
Bette Davis is Linda Gilman, editor, Home Life magazine
1942 WOMAN OF THE YEAR
Katharine Hepburn is Tess Harding, world-affairs journalist-columnist,
New York Chronicle
Spencer Tracy is Sam Craig, sports columnist, New York Chronicle
1948 STATE OF THE UNION
Angela Lansbury is Kay Thorndyke, publisher, Thorndyke Publications
Lewis Stone is Sam Thorndyke, publisher, Thorndyke Publications
Van Johnson is Spike McManus, political columnist, Thorndyke Publications
THE 1950s
1959 -30-
Louise Lorimer is Lady Wilson, rewrite-reporter, Los Angeles Examiner
Nancy Valentine is Jan Price, cub reporter, Los Angeles Examiner
Jack Webb is Sam Gatlin, night editor, Los Angeles Examiner
William Conrad is Jim Bathgate, city editor, Los Angeles Examiner
James Bell is Ben Quinn, copy editor, Los Angeles Examiner
David Nelson is Collins, copy boy, Los Angeles Examiner
1958. TEACHER’S PET
Doris Day is Erika Stone, journalism teacher
Clark Gable is James Gannon (“Gallagher”), city editor, Evening Chronicle
Joel Barlow Stone, Erika’s father, a famous small-town editor, now deceased
1952 WASHINGTON STORY
Patricia Neal is Alice Kingsly, reporter, Cumberly Press
Philip Ober is Gilbert Nunnally, Washington columnist, Cumberly Press
John Sheldon is dean of the press corps
Lloyd Alcott is the Pulitzer Prize winner, now working for Nunnally
1955 THE BIG KNIFE
Ilka Chase is Patty Benedict, Hollywood gossip columnist
1950 TO PLEASE A LADY
Barbara Stanwyck is Regina Forbes, syndicated columnist
Adolph Menjou is Greg, her editor
1953 ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE
Lana Turner is Sara Scott, foreign correspondent in London, New York Standard
Sean Connery is Mark Trevor, reporter, British Broadcasting Corporation
Barry Sullivan is Carter Reynolds, editor, New York Standard
1952 FLESH AND FURY
Mona Freeman is Ann Hollis, feature writer, Panorama magazine
1956 TEXAS LADY
Claudette Colbert is Prudence Webb, editor-publisher, The Clarion, Fort Ralston,
Texas
1957 THE LAND UNKNOWN
Shaw Smith is Margaret Hathaway, reporter, Oceanic Press
1954 LIVING IT UP
Janet Leigh is Wally Cook, reporter, New York Morning Chronicle
Fred Clark is Oliver Stone, New York Morning Chronicle
CLASS SIX: ANN MITCHELL VIEWING NOTES
1940 MEET JOHN DOE
Barbara Stanwyck is Ann Mitchell, columnist, The Bulletin
Edward Arnold is D.B. Norton, publisher, The New Bulletin
James Gleason is Henry Connell, managing editor, The New Bulletin
Real-life radio commentators: Mike Frankovich, Knox Manning, John B. Hughes
CLASS SEVEN: THE 1970s VIEWING NOTES
The 1970s
1975 THE LIVES OF JENNY DOLAN
Shirley Jones is Jenny Dolan, reporter
Stephen Boyd is Joe Rossiter, editor
1976 NETWORK
Peter Finch is Howard Beale, UBS network anchor
William Holden is Max Schumacher, UBS network president, news division
Faye Dunaway is Diana Christensen, UBS program chief
Robert Duvall is Frank Hackett, UBS network president
1979 THE CHINA SYNDROME
Jane Fonda is Kimberly Wells, TV reporter-anchor, KXLA, Channel 3
Stan Bohrman is Pete Martin, TV anchor, KXLA, Channel 3
James Karen is Mac Churchill, TV news director, KXLA, Channel 3
Michael Douglas is Richard Adams, freelance cameraman
Peter Donat is Don Jacovich, station manager, KXLA, Channel 3
1979 THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN
Jane Fonda is Hallie Martin, TV newswoman
1979 ACT OF VIOLENCE
James Sloyan is Tony Bonelli, TV reporter, KTNS, Channel 6
Elizabeth Montgomery is Catherine McSweeney, TV news production assistant,
KTNS, Channel 6
Bill McGuire is Tom Sullivan, TV news director, KTNS, Channel 6
1978 FIRST, YOU CRY
Mary Tyler Moore is Betty Rollin, NBC News correspondent
Don Johnson is Dan, NBC News executive producer
James Watson is Cal, NBC video editor
Robin Rosi is Robin, NBC researcher
Sari Price is an NBC News correspondent
Carole Hemingway is the interviewer
Lois Lane
1941-1943 SUPERMAN CARTOONS
Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
1948-1950 SUPERMAN MOVIE SERIALS
Kirk Alyn is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Noel Neill is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Pierre Watkin is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Tommy Bond is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
1951 THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: THE TELEVISION PROGRAM
George Reeves is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Phyllis Coates is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet (early episodes)
Noel Neill is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
John Hamilton is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Jack Larson is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
1978 SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE
Christopher Reeve is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Margot Kidder is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Jackie Cooper is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Marc McClure is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
1980 SUPERMAN II
Christopher Reeve is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Margot Kidder is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Jackie Cooper is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Marc McClure is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
1983 SUPERMAN III
Christopher Reeve is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Margot Kidder is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Jackie Cooper is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Marc McClure is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
1987 SUPERMAN IV
Christopher Reeve is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Margot Kidder is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Jackie Cooper is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Marc McClure is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
Sam Wanamaker is David Warfield, media mogul
Mariel Hemingway is Lacey Warfield, new publisher, Daily Planet
1993 LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
Dean Cain is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Teri Hatcher is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
Lane Smith is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet
Michael Landes is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
(early episodes)
Justin Whalen is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
1997 THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN – CARTOONS
Tim Daley is Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet (voice-only)
Dana Delaney is Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet (voice-only)
George Dzundza is Perry White, editor, Daily Planet (voice-only)
David Kaufman is Jimmy Olson, cub reporter-photographer, Daily Planet
Lauren Tom is Angela Chen, TV newscaster
1997 THE NEW BATMAN AND SUPERMAN ADVENTURES
Clark Kent, reporter, Daily Planet
Lois Lane, reporter, Daily Planet
2001-2005 SMALLVILLE
Erica Durance is Lois Lane, Allison’s cousin and new writer for the
Smallville High Torch, the school’s newspaper
Allison Mack is Chloe Sullivan, Lois Lane’s cousin, editor,
Smallville High Torch.
Tom Welling is Clark Kent, Reporter, Smallville High Torch newspaper
CLASS EIGHT – MID-TERM EXAMINATION
CLASS NINE NOTES: THE 1980s. MARY RICHARDS AND MURPHY BROWN. TV REPORTERS IN JEOPARDY. MAGAZINE JOURNALISTS. COLUMNISTS
VIEWING NOTES
The 1980s
1981 ABSENCE OF MALICE
Sally Field is Megan Carter, reporter, Miami Sentinel
Josef Somner is McAdam, editor, Miami Sentinel
1987 BROADCAST NEWS
Holly Hunter is Jane Craig, producer, TV network news
William Hurt is Tom Grunick, anchor, TV network news
Albert Brooks is Aaron Altman, correspondent, TV network news
Joan Cusack is Lois Chiles, associate producer, TV network news
Jack Nicholson is Bill Rorish, anchor, TV network news
Peter Hackes is Paul Moore, president, TV network news division
1989 MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
Farrah Fawcett is Margaret Bourke-White, photojournalist
Jay Pattern is Henry Luce, founder-editor-publisher, Time, Fortune and Life
magazines
Frederic Forrest is Erskine Caldwell, writer
Mary Richards-Murphy Brown
1970-1977 THE MARY TYLER MORE SHOW
Mary Tyler Moore is Mary Richards, associate producer, WJM News
Ed Asner is Lou Grant, news director-executive producer, WJM News
Ted Knight is Ted Baxter, anchor, WJM News
Gavin McLeod is Murray Slaughter, newswriter, WJM News
Eileen Heckart is Flo Meredith, Richards’ aunt and veteran reporter
John Amos is Gordon “Gordy” Howard, weatherman, WJM News
1988-1998 MURPHY BROWN
Candice Bergen is Murphy Brown, reporter-interviewer,
FYI newsmagazine, CBS News, Washington, D.C.
Grant Shaud is Miles Silverberg, executive producer, FYI newsmagazine
Faith Ford is Corky Sherwood, reporter, FYI newsmagazine
Joe Regalbuto is Frank Fontana, investigative reporter, FYI newsmagazine
Charles Kimbrough is Jim Dial, anchor, FYI newsmagazine
Real-life guest-stars:
Sally Jesse Raphael, talk-show host
David Letterman, talk-show host
Wolf Blitzer (CNN), McLaughlin Report cast
Linda Ellerbee (ABC), Irving R. Levine (NBC),
Walter Cronkite (CBS), 60 Minutes team:
Mike Wallace, Steve Kroft, Leslie Stahl, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer; Charles Kuralt (CBS), Katie Couric (NBC Today), Joan Lunden
(ABC), Faith Baldwin (CBS), Paula Zahn, Mary Alice Walker
(CNN)
Morgan Fairchild is Julia St. Martin, actress hired to play “Kelly Green”
newsroom situation comedy about an anchor woman on a live
weekly newsmagazine program
Lily Tomlin is Kay Carter-Shepley, executive producer, FYI newsmagazine
Part Three: Magazine Journalists
1985 A BUNNY’S TALE
Kirstie Alley is Gloria Steinem, free-lance magazine writer-reporter
1984 HER LIFE AS A MAN
Robin Douglas is Carly Perkins disguised as Carl Parsons, reporter, Sports Life
(Based on series of articles by Carol Lynn Mithers in the Village Voice)
Robert Culp is David Fleming, editor, Sports Life
Laraine Newman is Barbara, staff writer, Sports Life
1989-1992 ANYTHING BUT LOVE
Jamie Lee Curtis is Hannah Miller, researcher, then writer, Chicago
Weekly magazine
Ann Magnuson is Catherine Hughes, editor, Chicago Weekly magazine
Richard Lewis is Marty Gold, writer, Chicago Weekly magazine
Richard Frank is Jules Bennett, executive assistant, Chicago Weekly
magazine
1984 A GOOD SPORT
Lee Remick is Michelle Tinney, editor, American Fashion magazine
Ralph Waite is Tommy O’Bannion, syndicated sports columnist based in New York
Part Four: Columnists
1985 MALICE IN WONDERLAND
Elizabeth Taylor is Louella Parsons, syndicated gossip columnist
Jane Alexander is Hedda Hopper, syndicated gossip columnist
1987 WARM HEARTS, COLD FEET
Margaret Colin is Amy Webster, sportswriter-columnist, Los Angeles Sun.
Column: “A Woman’s Odyssey.”
Tim Matheson is Mike Byrd, sportswriter-columnist, Los Angeles Tribune
Column: “Byrd’s Eye View.”
George di Cenzo is Robert “Scotty” Scott, sports editor, Los Angeles Tribune
Barry Corbin is Max Blye, sports editor, Los Angeles Sun
Kurt Fuller is Roger, sportswriter, Los Angeles Sun
Part Five: Television Reporters in Jeopardy
1981 EYEWITNESS
Sigourney Weaver is Toni Sokolow, TV reporter, Channel 5 News
1987 STILLWATCH
Lynda Carter is Patricia Traymore, TV reporter, Potomac Cable Network
(PCN) News
Stuart Whitman is Luther Pelham, PCN news anchor, Potomac Cable Network
1982 THE SEDUCTION
Morgan Fairchild is Jamie Douglas, TV reporter-anchor, KXLA Channel 6 News
Michael Serrazin is Brandon, newspaper columnist
1980 EYES OF A STRANGER
Lauren Tewes is Jane Harris, TV reporter, WCIZ-TV Coral Television News
1982 A STRANGER IS WATCHING
Kate Mulgrew is Sharon Martin, TV newscaster
James Naughton is Steve Peterson, editor, News Today magazine
1982 VISITING HOURS
Lee Grant is Deborah Ballin, TV news interviewer-commentator
William Shatner is Gene Baylor, her boss
1984 YEAR OF THE DRAGON
Ariane is Tracy Tzu, TV reporter, WKXT News, New York
.
CLASS TEN – GAYLE GAYLEY AND JESSICA SAVITCH VIEWING NOTES
1992 HERO
Geena Davis is Gale Gayley, Reporter, Channel 4 News
Chevy Chase is Deke, News Director, Channel 4 News
1995 ALMOST GOLDEN: JESSICA SAVITCH STORY
Sela Ward is TV Reporter-Anchor Jessica Savage
Ron Silver is Reporter Ron Kershaw
CLASS ELEVEN – TALLY ATWATER VIEWING NOTES
1996 UP CLOSE & PERSONAL
Michelle Pfeiffer is TV Reporter Tally Atwater
Robert Redford is Journalist Warren Justice
Stockard Channing is Network TV Anchor Marcia McGrath
CLASS TWELVE – MARY SUNSHINE. ADVICE COLUMNISTS
EDITOR ALICIA CLARK
VIEWING NOTES
MARY SUNSHINE
1932 FORBIDDEN
Ralph Bellamy is Al Holland, city editor, Daily Record
Barbara Stanwyck is Lulu Smith, “Mary Sunshine,” advice-to-the-lovelorn
columnist, Daily Record
1942 ROXIE HART
Spring Byington is Mary Sunshine, feature writer, Daily Gazette
George Montgomery is Homer Howard, reporter, Daily Gazette
Lynne Overman is Jake Callahan, reporter, Daily Gazette
Phil Silvers is Babe, news photographer, Daily Gazette
2002 CHICAGO
Christine Baranski is Tabloid Columnist Mary Sunshine, Evening Star
ADVICE COLUMNISTS DEAR ABBY AND ANN LANDERS
1999 TAKE MY ADVICE: THE ANN AND ABBY STORY
Wendie Malick is Esther Lederer (aka Ann Landers)
Wendie Malick is Pauline Phillips (aka Abigail “Abby” Van Buren)
1984-1992 NIGHT COURT
Lana Anders, advice-to-lovelorn columnist, “Dear Lana”
Vana Anders, advice-to-lovelorn columnist, “Ask Vana”
ALICIA CLARK
1994 THE PAPER
Glenn Close is Alicia Clark, managing editor, The New York Sun
Michael Keaton is Henry Hackett, metro editor, The New York Sun
Robert Duvall is Bernie White, editor, The New York Sun
Randy Quaid is McDougal, columnist, The New York Sun
Spalding Gray is Paul Bladden, editor of The New York Sentinel
CLASS THIRTEEN – VERONICA GUERIN AND SINEAD HAMILTON
VIEWING NOTES
2003 VERONICA GUERIN
Cate Blanchett is Veronica Guerin, investigative reporter of the London Sunday Tribune
2000 WHEN THE SKY FALLS
Joan Allen is Sinead Hamilton, investigative reporter of the Sunday Globe
(Story is based on Veronica Guerin)
CLASS FOURTEEN: REVIEW
CLASS FIFTEEN: IN-CLASS FINAL EXAMINATION
ALTERNATIVE FINAL EXAMINATION: Friday, December 12, 2 to 4 p.m.
GLOSSARY
Compiled by Jack Leonard, Class of 1998, and Joe Saltzman
ANCHOR: The on-camera person who reads the script for a broadcast news show. Some anchors write their own scripts, but most read only what reporters and other off-camera writers have written.
ANONYMOUS SOURCES: People willing to provide information only on the condition that their names not be used in the story.
ATTRIBUTION: Telling readers or viewers the source of the information.
BANNER/BANNERLINE: Headline across or near the top of all or most of a newspaper page. Usually refers to the Page One headline of the main news section.
BENNETT, JAMES GORDON: Legendary newspaper editor. In 1835, James Gordon Bennett, disillusioned with the state of journalism and deeply in debt, founded the New York Morning Herald. His office was a cellar on Wall Street, his equipment a single desk, a second-hand chair and a box of files, and his staff numbered just one: Himself. From this humble beginning, Bennett built one of the most profitable newspapers of his time, one that by 1860 would be the world’s largest daily. The Herald first owed its popularity to its coverage of crime, competing in sensationalism with the New York Sun, but it soon developed in other areas. Within a few years, it was publishing the best financial section of any standard newspaper. It developed a critical review column and society news, provided readers with the most up-to-date news of events in Europe and was one of the first papers to publish sports news. Until the creation of the Herald, newspapers were the mouthpieces of political groups. Bennett was the first to recognize that readers might want to read news rather than views. His first edition of the Herald declared: “We shall support no party – be the organ of no faction or coterie. . . If the Herald wants the mere expansion which so many journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity, variety, point, piquancy and cheapness.”
BIERCE, AMBROSE: 19th-century American newspaperman, wit, satirist, and author of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. Following service in the Civil War, Bierce moved to San Francisco to write newspaper articles and short stories. Soon, he had become the literary arbiter of the West Coast. In 1887, he joined the staff of William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, for which he wrote the “Prattler” column for nine years before moving to Washington, D.C., where he continued newspaper and magazine writing.
Bierce separated from his wife, lost his two sons, and broke many friendships. As a newspaper columnist, he specialized in critical attacks on amateur poets, clergymen, bores, dishonest politicians, money grabbers, pretenders, and frauds of all sorts. His most well-known books are “In the Midst of Life” (1891), which included some of his finest stories; “Can Such Things Be?” (1893); and “The Devil’s Dictionary” (1906), a volume of ironic definitions, which has been often reprinted. In 1913, tired of American life, he went to Mexico, then in the middle of a revolution led by Pancho Villa. His end is a mystery, but some believe he was probably killed in the siege of Ojinaga in January, 1914.
BLY, NELLIE: In 1886, a young reporter who called herself Nellie Bly feigned insanity to gain entry to New York’s insane asylum and exposed the inhuman conditions in the hospital. Bly worked for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
BULLDOG EDITION: Early edition of a newspaper, usually the first edition of the day.
BYLINE: Name of the reporter who wrote the story, placed above the published article but below the headline. Decades ago, bylines were only given to reporters covering important or unusual stories, or if the writing was particularly good. Today, nearly any story more than four or five paragraphs typically gets a byline.
CHECKBOOK JOURNALISM: Paying for a source to tell his or her story. Critics of checkbook journalism say that it encourages sources to lie, or at least exaggerate, in order to earn money, and that it discourages citizens from coming forward to expose wrongdoing without being paid.
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT: Responsible for gaining subscribers and ensuring
that newspapers arrive at the right places at the right times.
CIRCULATION WARS: Usually refers to the battle for readers in New York at the turn of the century between papers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and those owned by William Randolph Hearst.
CITY EDITION: The edition reserved for selling in the city. Usually the news is selected specifically to meet the needs of people who live in the city. Newspapers often reserve other editions for the suburbs or other parts of the country. For example, the Los Angeles Times has a city edition that is sold in Los Angeles, as well as separate editions for Orange County, Ventura County, the San Fernando Valley and Washington, D.C.
CITY EDITOR: The editor who runs the city or metropolitan desk and is in charge of local news coverage and the reporters covering local news.
CLIP: News story clipped from a newspaper, usually cut out for future reference.
COLUMNS:
1. Columns are vertical divisions of a news page. A standard-size newspaper is divided into five to eight columns. Headlines are measured in columns (as well as type size). A three-column spread means that the headline stretches across three columns.
2. Columns are bylined articles of opinion – a sports column, medical column, political column, arts column or social commentary. They are frequently written by an authority on the subject who does not work for the paper, or by a reporter who switches from newswriting to opinion writing becoming a columnist.
COPY: Raw news article written by a reporter before it is edited.
COPY DESK: The desk inside a newsroom where copy editors process copy written by reporters and write headlines and captions as required.
COPY EDITOR: The copy editor checks stories to ensure that they follow the newspaper’s style, usage, spelling and grammar rules. The copy editor also makes certain that stories are well-organized, factual and not libelous. After editing stories, the copy editor writes headlines, and, if requested, captions for them.
COPY PAPER: The paper on which a story is typed. With the widespread use of computers, copy paper is rarely used anymore. Copy paper is often newsprint trimmed to 8½ by 11 inches.
Before the advent of computers, copy paper often came in “books” that contained carbon paper with each page a different color. One page was kept by the reporter, another by the copy desk and the original sent to the composing room to be set in type.
CUB: An untrained reporter who is learning how to collect and write news.
CRONKITE, WALTER: Anchor for the CBS Evening News from April, 1962, to 1981. He was also the first managing editor of the “Evening News,” which gave him considerable say in the selection, timing and arrangement of the day’s news items. During his tenure, the nightly broadcasts expanded from 15 to 30 minutes (the first half-hour show was aired on Sept. 2, 1963, a week ahead of NBC’s first expanded newscast). Cronkite anchored the network’s marathon coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination and funeral in November, 1963, and the coverage of almost all of America’s space missions of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1968 when he returned from Vietnam, his conclusion that Americans had been misled about the course of the conflict and that the United States should negotiate a withdrawal is said to have dramatically changed public opinion about the U.S. position on the Vietnam conflict. During the 1960s and 1970s, Cronkite was considered by many as the most trusted man in America.
DANA, CHARLES: A legendary 19th-century newspaper editor. Dana first rose to prominence as an assistant to Horace Greeley on the New York Tribune before becoming managing editor in 1849. One of the London correspondents he hired while at the Tribune was Karl Marx, whose political and economic writings led to the social system of communism. In the early days of the Civil War, Dana left the Tribune and entered government service, before returning to journalism and buying the New York Sun, the original penny newspaper and one of the city’s most popular rags. Dana ran the Sun from 1869 to 1897 and earned a reputation as one of the most respected editors of the post-Civil War period. He combined style and wit with serious journalism in the Sun’s four pages of news every day. Originally a follower of socialism as it emerged around the middle of the century, Dana’s Sun grew conservative and anti-union as Dana grew older.
DUMMY EDITION: A mock newspaper or magazine page that has advertisements with specific sizes on it. News stories, features and photographs are laid out around the ads. A dummy page or dummy edition helps newspaper journalists gauge how long an article, or how large a picture, should be.
EDITION: One version of a newspaper. Some papers have one edition per day, some several.
EDITOR: The person in charge of the editorial function of a newspaper, including reports, columns, editorials, photographs. There is also a hierarchy in newspaper and magazine editorship, from editor-in-chief (considered the editor) through managing editor, city editor, features editor, news editor, and so on.
EDITORIAL: Article of comment or opinion that speaks for the paper. Usually printed on the same page as the paper’s masthead.
EDITORIAL MATERIAL: Everything in the newspaper that is not advertising.
ELECTRONIC/PRINT JOURNALIST: Electronic journalists work for radio, television or Internet news organizations. Print journalists work for newspapers and magazines.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: The person who runs a television newsroom. He or she is responsible for story content, coverage, long-range planning and scheduling and countless other decisions. At smaller stations the executive producer may also make assignments, edit reporters’ copy and decide the layout of each news show.
EXTRA: Special edition of a newspaper to provide an update on a particularly newsworthy, breaking story.
FILE: To send a story to the newspaper’s office, usually by wire or telephone or to put news service stories on the wire (see WIRE SERVICES).
FIVE STAR FINAL: Fifth and final edition of a day’s newspaper. Each edition would be marked by a number of stars displayed at the top of the newspaper’s pages, with the first edition getting one star and the final five. The term is rarely used anymore.
FREELANCE: To produce news stories for a publication when one is not a full-time employee. A reporter who does this is described as a freelancer.
GREELEY, HORACE: Legendary newspaper editor. Between the 1830s and the Civil War, the penny press directed their efforts at attracting readers from the emerging working class by running stories about sex and crime. When Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841, he declared that the paper would avoid the “immoral and degrading police reports, advertisements and other matters which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading penny papers.”
Greeley was soon running some of the material he had condemned, but the hallmark of the Tribune was serious discussion of the issues of the day – temperance, politics, farming, labor, education, the horror of debt, women’s rights, marriage, the frontier and slavery. Greeley was considered the best newspaper editor of his generation. In 1871, he won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, but was trounced in the following election by incumbent Ulysses S. Grant. Greeley died a few weeks later.
HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH: A successful California miner turned U.S. senator turned newspaper publisher. Hearst imitated Joseph Pulitzer’s financially successful brand of journalism, which emphasized crusades, self-promotion, and sensational crime and sex stories, but failed to incorporate Pulitzer’s respect for accuracy and truth. Hearst owned the New York Morning Journal, which, around the turn of the century, became locked in a circulation war with Pulitzer’s New York World. He cut the Journal’s price to a penny, hired away many of the World’s top journalists and battled Pulitzer over whose paper could most overdramatize Spanish injustices in Cuba. This last issue snowballed into a public outcry for American intervention in Cuba that in turn led to the Spanish-American War of 1898. A reporter for Hearst described a typical Hearst paper as “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.” Hearst had the man fired. Hearst was the real-life subject for Herman Mankiewicz’s roman-a-clef Citizen Kane, directed by and starring Orson Welles.
HOPPER, HEDDA: Along with Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper was one of the best known journalists in the United States, a powerful Hollywood gossip columnist. At the height of her popularity, she appeared in about 85 big-city newspapers, 3,000 small-town dailies and 2,000 weeklies in addition to a national radio program. More than 75 million people read her every day. She began her column in 1938 and wrote it until her death in 1966. Her legendary feud with Parsons was said to have lasted until the day she died.
HOWEY, WALTER: The scheming city editor Walter Burns of The Front Page was modeled after Walter Howey, a real-life city editor of the Chicago Tribune making $8,000 a year until publisher William Randolph Hearst lured him away to New York with an offer of $35,000 a year. It was an offer Howey couldn’t refuse, so he became editor of the New York Mirror. At one time or another, just about all the Hollywood writers had worked for Walter Howey and/or spent their drinking hours with friends who did. He was the legend: The classic model of the amoral, irresponsible, irrepressible newsman who cares about nothing but scoops and circulation. He had lost an eye (supposedly in actual fighting of circulation wars), and Ben Hecht is quoted as saying you could tell which was the glass eye because it was the warmer one.
HUMAN INTEREST STORY: A feature story that focuses on a subject’s uniqueness, appealing to the reader’s general interest apart from breaking news.
HUNTLEY, CHET and BRINKLEY, DAVID: During the 1956 political convention, NBC paired the baritone Montanan, Chet Huntley, and the dry, cynically whimsical North Carolinian, David Brinkley, to compete with CBS’s number one news anchor team. Four years earlier, CBS’s Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite had together dominated network coverage of the convention. But in 1956, Huntley-Brinkley began to convert American viewers to NBC. By 1960, the pair were number one in news ratings. Their final exchange on the air every evening would often be imitated: “Good night, Chet.” “Good night, David, and good night for NBC News.” CBS News eventually topped NBC again in 1969. A year later, Huntley retired. Brinkley continued working, however, eventually moving over to ABC News before his retirement in 1997.
JAZZ JOURNALISM: Like yellow journalism at the turn of the century, jazz journalism was typified by sensational crime reports and court stories, but the term refers to the period of the 1920s and the rivalry of the three top tabloid papers in New York: The Daily News, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Graphic.
LAYOUT DEPARTMENT: Responsible for designing each day’s newspaper, making sure that photographs, stories and ads fit into the space allotted.
LEAD: First paragraph in a news story. Unless the article is a feature, the lead usually summarizes the main facts. In feature stories, it sets a mood or re-creates a scene. Reporters write a new lead if late-breaking, important news supplants the initial lead.
LIBEL: The legal offense of publishing or broadcasting a story that damages a person’s reputation by holding him or her up to public ridicule, hatred or scorn. The Supreme Court has ruled that to win a libel suit, plaintiffs (those filing the suit) who are public officials or public figures must prove that the controversial material was published or broadcast with “actual malice.” This means that plaintiffs must prove that the information was communicated “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” [See PUBLIC OFFICIAL and PUBLIC FIGURE]
LINOTYPE: A typesetting machine that cast type in complete lines rather than in individual characters. It was patented in the United States in 1884 by Ottmar Mergenthaler and made newspaper printing much faster. Linotype has now largely been supplanted by photocomposition, which is accomplished with computers.
MASTHEAD: Formal statement of a newspaper’s name, officers, place of publication and other descriptive information. It is usually found on the editorial page.
MISREPRESENTATION: When a reporter deceives people into thinking that he or she is not a journalist. Reporters often misrepresent their identities when they go undercover, but many critics disagree with the technique, arguing that a reporter’s job is to educate the public about important issues, not to deceive people. Proponents of undercover reporting counter that misrepresentation is sometimes excusable when there is no other way to get an important story.
MORGUE: Newspaper library, where the old or “dead” issues of the paper are kept. Most morgues now store electronic (or computer-generated) files.
MURROW, EDWARD R.: The most influential and esteemed figure in American broadcast journalism during its formative years. Murrow joined CBS in 1935 and went to London two years later to head the network’s European bureau. There, his reliable and dramatic eyewitness reports of the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the Battle of Britain during World War II brought Murrow national fame and marked radio journalism’s coming of age. After the war, Murrow returned to America with a weekly newscast, “Hear It Now,” which he soon transferred to television as “See It Now.” During the anti-Communist hysteria of the early ‘50s, Murrow produced a now-legendary exposé of the dubious tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who had gained prominence with flamboyant charges of Communist infiltration of government agencies. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Murrow director of the U.S. Information Agency. Murrow died in 1965.
NEWS DIRECTOR: The top person in a television newsroom. He or she usually does the kind of jobs that a managing editor does on a newspaper. The news director is responsible for what goes on the air and the hiring and firing of newspeople.
NEWSREEL: Short motion picture accounts of current events introduced in England about 1897 by Frenchman Charles Pathé. Newsreels were shown first in music halls between entertainment acts and later between feature films in motion-picture theaters. Because spot news was expensive to shoot, newsreels covered planned events, such as parades, inaugurations, sports, bathing beauty contests, and events with an impact that outlasted their actual duration, such as floods and fires. “The March of Time” (1935), produced in the United States by Time Inc., combined filmed news with interpretive interviews and dramatizations. The number of newsreels declined markedly with the rising popularity of television news and documentaries. By the late 1950s, the last of the American newsreels, “Fox Movietone News,” had gone out of business.
OBITUARY/OBIT: Account of a person’s death, followed by a description of their life.
OFF THE RECORD: Information given on the condition that it be confidential and not used.
ON BACKGROUND: An agreement reached by a reporter and source prior to interview that the material can be used as information, but not attributed to the source by name.
ON DEEP BACKGROUND: A similar agreement that the material can be used, but not in direct quotations and not accompanied by attribution.
ON THE RECORD: An agreement reached by a reporter and source prior to interview that the material can be used and the source fully identified.
PARK ROW: Once to American journalism what Fleet Street was to British journalism. In the 1880s it was the residence of the most successful and well-known of New York’s newspapers, including Joseph Pulitzer’s World, Charles Dana’s Sun, James Gordon Bennett’s Herald, and two other famous New York papers, the Tribune and the Times.
PACK JOURNALISM: The coverage of stories by a large number of reporters and photographers. One criticism of pack journalism is that, apart from looking unseemly, it encourages conformity in news reports because journalists talk to one another as they are covering the news. As the number of news organizations covering national events has ballooned along with the advance of news-gathering technology, pack (or “herd”) journalism has become a bigger problem, media critics say.
PARSONS, LOUELLA: For more than three decades, she was one of the best-known journalists in the United States, a powerful Hollywood gossip columnist. At the height of her popularity, she appeared in about 85 big-city newspapers, 3,000 small-town dailies and 2,000 weeklies in addition to a national radio program. More than 75 million people read her every day. She was virtually unchallenged until 1938 when Hedda Hopper, a character actress fallen on hard times, was hired as a gossip columnist. The feud between the columnists lasted until Hopper’s death in 1966.
PRESS AGENT: Nowadays part of the public relations profession, a press agent provided information to reporters about a cause, a company or a person for whom the agent worked.
PRESS PASS/CARD/CREDENTIAL: An identification card that grants a reporter access to places usually off limits to the public.
PUBLIC FIGURE: In libel cases, a person who is judged to have “voluntarily thrust” himself or herself into a public controversy, or a person who has a role of “especial prominence.” In libel cases, a public figure who sues must prove that the controversial material was untrue and published with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. [See LIBEL]
PUBLIC OFFICIAL: In libel cases, a government employee who has substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of governmental affairs. Like a public figure, public officials who sue for libel must prove that the controversial material was untrue and published with actual malice or a reckless disregard for the truth. [See LIBEL]
PULITZER, JOSEPH: American newspaper publisher born in Hungary in 1847 before immigrating to the United States, where he rose to prominence first as a reporter and then as a newspaper owner in St. Louis and New York. His newspapers earned a reputation for crusading in the public interest, exposing crooked politicians, police corruption and wealthy tax-dodgers. But they also became known for sleazy reporting with their sensational stories of sex and violent crime. Pulitzer is best remembered today for his endowment of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, which awards annual Pulitzer Prizes for excellence in journalism.
PULITZER PRIZE: Annual award for achievement in American journalism, letters, drama and music. Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded by Columbia University since 1917 on recommendation of a Pulitzer Prize Board. For print journalists, the Pulitzer Prize represents their profession’s highest achievement.
RE-PLATE: To reset the lines of type on the printing press and make new plates for another press run. With the advent of photocomposition, replated pages contain new copy, headlines, photos or captions produced by computer, then re-shot for new plates to on the press. Replating is done to add new information or to correct errors.
RETRACTION/CORRECTION: Errors that reach publication are sometimes retracted or corrected if they are serious or someone demands one. Often these appear in a box – such as the “For the Record” section in the Los Angeles Times – or in an article of their own if the mistake was libelous.
REWRITE: The name for the desk where reporters sit typing and rewriting news fed from other reporters out covering a story.
RUTH SNYDER AND THE ELECTRIC CHAIR: In 1927, Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray were tried for the murder of Snyder’s husband. When Snyder was found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair, New York’s tabloids fell over each other to grab exclusives of the execution. While the Daily Graphic ran a scoop interview with Snyder before her death, it was the Daily News that made headlines. Pictures of executions were forbidden, but a News photographer, Tom Howard, strapped a tiny camera to his ankle and took a picture just after the electric current was turned on. The photo ran on the paper’s front page and the day’s issue sold out quickly. Howard’s stunt is an oft-repeated theme in journalism movies.
SIDEBAR: Story that emphasizes and elaborates on a mainbar as part or parts of a bigger story. A human-interest or color story with anecdotes growing out of a mainbar would add information or perspective to the primary news story. Charts or graphs can be part of sidebar materials.
SLUG: A one- or two-word label on all pages of a story before it’s put into print. A slug helps identify the story and before the advent of computers identified missing pages of a story.
SOCIETY EDITOR: The person who organized the section of newspapers decades ago that used to print society gossip and features. Nowadays, society news, if covered, is usually part of a newspaper’s Lifestyle section.
SOURCE: Something or someone that provides information for the story. When talked about in movies, it usually refers to a person.
SUB: Information that substitutes for, or replaces old material.
SULLIVAN, ED: The syndicated Broadway columnist whose “Toast of the Town” weekly television program from 1948 to 1971 was the longest running variety show in television history. In 1955, the program was renamed “The Ed Sullivan Show,” to capitalize on his growing popularity as the host.
SWAYZE, JOHN CAMERON: NBC anchorman who narrated newsreel clips for his 15-minute show, “Camel News Caravan,” which ran from 1949 to 1956. When Swayze’s show began, “Camel News Caravan” was one of only two news shows on television, competing with Douglas Edwards on CBS-TV News. These newscasts were primarily “talking heads,” offering viewers little in the way of dynamic visuals from across the globe that today’s audiences are accustomed to seeing. What little newsreels they used were time-consuming to produce, but provided audiences with their first glimpse of the world. Every night, Swayze called on viewers to “go hopscotching the world for headlines.”
-30-: Old newspaper symbol indicating the end of a story. It was preferred to “The End,” or some other such phrase, so that workers in the printing rooms would not mistake the phrase for part of the story and include it at the end.
TELETYPE MACHINE: In 1924, AT&T introduced a printing telegraph system called the Teletype that helped reduce the time news took to travel from one part of the world to another. The unit consisted of a typewriter keyboard and a printer. Each keystroke generated a series of coded electric impulses that were then sent over a transmission line to a receiving system. There the receiver decoded the pulses and printed the message on a paper tape.
WINCHELL, WALTER: New Yorker who promoted the gossip column as the Broadway reporter for tabloid newspapers from the 1930s through the 1950s. Winchell was the king of sensationalism, lacing stories with intimate details about celebrities’ private lives. When he moved his column onto radio, he drew huge audiences, earning the top spot in listener ratings in 1946. He continued on the air with the salacious material that had made his tabloid columns so popular, but he also enlightened Americans about the threat of Nazism and provided Franklin D. Roosevelt with strong support during the 1940 presidential campaign.
WIRE SERVICES: News organizations that transmit stories to subscribers through Teletype machines or computers, often simply referred to as the “wires.” The stories are frequently used as tips, as information to flesh out stories generated by staff reporters and freelancers or as articles printed as written. The most famous wire services are Associated Press (AP), Reuters and United Press International (UPI), formerly known as United Press (UP).
WOODWARD-BERNSTEIN: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were reporters on the Washington Post who broke open the Watergate scandal in 1973 that eventually forced President Richard M. Nixon to resign. Their last names together became synonymous for good investigative reporting and the name was often shortened to Woodstein in newsrooms across the country.
YELLOW JOURNALISM: A term of derision coined for newspapers with an emphasis on sensational stories, usually crime reports, that typified the newspapers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst in New York at the turn of the century. Yellow journalism got its name from a popular cartoon of the era – the Yellow Kid. Driven more by profits than a desire to print high-quality journalism, Hearst and Pulitzer fought over syndication rights for the Yellow Kid.
ZENGER, JOHN PETER: Zenger’s name has become synonymous with freedom of the press ever since the landmark trial in 1735, in which he was accused of libeling the governor of New York. Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal had indeed criticized the governor and his administration. In the 18th century that was enough to warrant a charge of libel. All a trial had to do was establish that the accused was responsible for printing the critical material. During Zenger’s trial, however, the publisher’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, proposed a revolutionary view of libel law – that the controversial statements must be false in order to be libelous. The jury bought the argument, and Zenger was freed. Although the case did not change libel law, it provided proponents of change with a moral and psychological victory. Zenger has now become a hero of American journalism.
[1] Harrison, James G., "American Newspaper Journalism as Described in American Novels of the Nineteenth Century," a thesis (Ph.D.) submitted to the Faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1945, p. 283.
[2] Ghiglione, Loren, The American Journalist: Paradox of the Press (Library of Congress, Washington, 1990), “Chapter 12, Newswoman: Tough and Tormented,” p. 122.
[3]Cahoon, Haryot Holt, “Women in Gutter Journalism,” The Arena, Boston, Vol. XVII, Dec. 1896-June 1897, p. 568. Holt paints a realistic picture of the young woman entering the editor’s office with “a brave attempt to overcome shyness, for her heart beats very loudly.” He is looking for new women who have courage, enthusiasm and talent. He will break her in gently with some trifling assignments to see what she can do with her pen, but that is of secondary consideration. The editor writes out a list of questions and sends her to interview a prizefighter and writes a charming interview that appears over “her signature. This speedy flight to the pinnacle of fame is far beyond her wildest and most ambitious imaginings. The result intoxicates her; the whole office is talking about her; and the men ask for an introduction. They shake hands with her and congratulate her; already she is a co-worker.” The next year she covers the brutal police court and the filthy slums (“Hers is professional curiosity. She must know about everything, or she can never expect to be a successful journalist”). She dresses up as a member of the Salvation Army, writes about it with pictures and a byline and “Fame now seems quite within her grasp.” She teaches in a Chinese Sunday school, “a Chinaman makes love to her,” and “All New York was talking about the great expose; she had never dreamed of fame like that.” “She is a regular heroine now, – a thoroughbred. Through her the newspaper poses as a great moral reformer.” She commits herself to a charity hospital and pretends to have an incurable disease. She “has a magnificent story this time, with her name signed to it, and fame actually staring her in the face. She was paid $10 a day for her work, and the newspaper had a big ‘beat.’ She sold what is rarely offered at $10 per day: her word, her honor, and her self-respect. She sold them pretty cheap….Ambition lashes her heels, and she labors under the misapprehension that she is working at legitimate journalism….Whatever work her editor lays out for her, that she stands ready to do, whether it is figuring in a balloon ascension or a fire-escape descent, posing as an artist’s model, camping all night on a millionaire’s grave, trotting round the globe in eighty days, or, in short, doing any of the things that are beneath the notice of any man on the staff, or, to put it more mildly, ‘outside of a man’s province.’” She now enjoys the “zenith of her newspaper glory. Her name is featured about town on posters and bill-boards, and she creates an enormous sale for the newspaper.” But “her usefulness as a tool of gutter journalism is waning….Disregard for the truth has by this time crowded out the results of her early training…Where now is the hopeful, credulous, enthusiastic, ambitious girl who came to the city about four years before, or less?” She now suffers from “ill health from exposure, self-neglect, late hours.” Her “ambition begins to wane,” she has no more ideas, and the newspaper has no further use for her. “Her place is soon filled by others who offer themselves a willing sacrifice upon the altar of sensational journalism….She has lost all the capital she had when she began – youth, health, credulity, her ideals, her self-respect, her enthusiasm, and her ambition.” She realizes that her fame was “only vulgar notoriety, and that it was unworthy of her.” She learned to adapt to the society of men, “almost sees through their eyes, and, if such a thing were possible, her ideas would become as perverted as theirs.” Cahoon laments the woman “who sacrifices herself upon the altar of gutter journalism, who makes herself valuable to a newspaper by relinquishing her individuality and her womanhood, who sells her honor for a column of newspaper matter, because it is expected of her,” pp. 568-574.
[4] Born, Donna, “The Image of the Woman Journalist in American Popular Fiction, 1890 to the Present,” A Paper presented to the Committee on the Status of Women of the Association of Education in Journalism Annual Convention, Michigan State University, East Lansing, August, 1981, p. 6. Born references Lois W. Banner’s Women in Modern America – A Brief History (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1974, p. 20). Banner also points out that “Among all professions, that of journalism offers perhaps the most impressive example of women’s intrepid persistence in the face of professional hostility. Since mid-century, women have been employed on newspapers as gossip columnists, as editors of women’s pages and sometimes as roving correspondents. But only rarely had a woman been hired as a regular reporter on general news stories. It took a succession of determined women to overcome this barrier.” p. 36.
[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.
[6] Harrison, James G., p. 283.
[7] Donna Born, p. 6.
[8] Donna Born, p. 7.
[9] McClure, H.H., “The Newspaper Novel,” from “Inside Views of Fiction,” The Bookman, Vol. XXXI, March-August, 1910, pp. 60. McClure adds that “the novelist very often gets himself into a fearful tangle when he tries to unite an on-the-scene love interest with his newspaper novel machinery. The woman literally is dragged into such narratives and her presence rarely succeeds, in fact, possibly cannot succeed, in convincing the reader that it is natural and conjoint with the evolution of the story in question.” McClure says many recent novels and short stories, however, prove to him that “the writer of the newspaper novel, if he sticks to things that he knows happen in the newspaper world, will have nothing to fear from the man whose more or less trained eye allows him to peep back of the scenes.”
[10] Even in silent films, women found a curious independence in newspaper movies. In A Female Reporter (1909), the society editor of the Daily Knocker robs a house to show how inefficient the police force is. The Reform Candidate (1911) features a feisty female reporter who exposes corruption in government and is praised by a contemporary critic as the kind of “up-to-date heroine that American audiences admire more than the clinging vine variety.” Her Big Story (1913) has a female journalist uncovering the real power behind the mayor – the owner of the newspaper she works for. The Sob Sister (1914) is a reporter, the daughter of the managing editor of the Times, who helps a runaway girl. How Molly Malone Made Good (aka How Molly Made Good, 1915) tells the story of a young Irish girl who is given an assignment to see if she can make it as a reporter. She pursues the story by car, bus, and airplane, is involved in a train wreck, subdues a pickpocket, eludes a vicious dog, and gets drenched in a rain shower. She finally gets the story and her reward is fifty dollars, a job, and the love of a handsome young associate editor. In Perils of Our Girl Reporters (1916), female journalists expose crooks and capture counterfeiters.
[11] For the last 70 years, the best-known female reporter sob sister has been Lois Lane of the Daily Planet who, with Clark Kent, fights for truth and justice in the best newspaper tradition (Superman cartoons, 1941-43; Noel Neill in Superman Movie Serials, 1948-50; Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill in The Adventures of Superman: The Television Program, 1952-57; Margot Kidder in the Superman movies, 1978-1987; Teri Hatcher in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, 1993-1997, a television series; and Dana Delaney in The Adventures of Superman cartoons, 1996-2000).
[12]Barris, Alex, Stop the Presses! The Newspaperman in American Films (A.S. Barnes and Co., Inc., Cranbury, NJ, 1976), p. 139.
[13] Summary comes from Alex Barris, p. 139.
[14]Ross, Ishbel, Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1936), p. 65.
[15] Good, Howard, Girl Reporter: Gender, Journalism, and the Movies (Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD, 1998), p. 50.
[16] Wentworth, Harold and Stuart Berg Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1960), p. 499.
p. 60-61.
[17] Ghiglione, Loren, pp. 123.
[18] “Most women cannot reconcile these seemingly contradictory forces, and in most cases in these early stories, they leave the profession,” writes Born. Donna Born, p. 10.
[19] No less than one of the most prominent journalists of his time, William Allen White, had his reservations about women in the newsroom. In “Society Editor,” from In Our Town (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1904, pp. 36-39), he demeans their dress, their laziness, and cattiness. The issue is, as Donna Born summarizes, “How does the woman reconcile the demands of her profession with the demands of the cultural stereotype? In other words, for a woman to succeed professionally, she must possess certain character traits, traits that are assigned to the cultural stereotype of the male, but possession of these traits (or at times possession of them to a greater degree than is acceptable – a subtle and arbitrary degree not always easily understood by the woman) can deny to the woman the happiness that she is supposed to find only in marriage.” (Donna Born, p. 8). This creates the dichotomy most women in fiction at the turn of the century had problems dealing with – maintaining their compassionate, feminine nature as defined by the times while still obtaining the so-called masculine traits of journalism – aggressiveness, curiosity, toughness, ambition, cynicism, cockiness – essential for a successful reporter or editor.
[20] Rossell, Deac, “Hollywood and the Newsroom,” American Films, October, 1975, p. 17.
[21] Kael, Pauline, “Raising Kane,” The Citizen Kane Book (An Atlantic Monthly Press Book, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1971), p. 48.
[22] From 1936 to 1939, there were nine Torchy Blane films, seven of them with Glenda Farrell as the reporter for a variety of newspapers, including The Morning Herald: Smart Blonde (1936); Fly-Away Baby (1937); The Adventurous Blonde (1937); Blondes at Work, (1938); Torchy Gets Her Man (1938); Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939), and Torchy Runs for Mayor (1939). Lola Lane briefly took over the role in 1938 (Torchy Blane in Panama), and Jane Wyman was the final Torchy Blane in Torchy Blane…Playing With Dynamite or Torchy Plays With Dynamite (1939).
[23] It was not surprising that Nancy Drew, the youngest sob sister of them all in Nancy Drew…Reporter (1939), would emulate all the female reporters she saw in the movies when she decided to try her hand at journalism. It was the most independent and intelligent role model for young women the movies had to offer in the 1930s. Bonita Granville plays Nancy Drew, who switches assignment slips so she can get a scoop. When the city editor finds out, he is angry, but Nancy tells him: “I thought reporters always did things like that – at least they do in the movies – and besides, it says right in my textbook on journalism that a newspaperman or woman must stop at nothing to get the news, and if she ever intends to impress the editor, she must be willing to do much more than just what the assignment calls for.”
[24] Good reports, in Girl Reporter: Gender, Journalism, and the Movies, the most thorough study of the Torchy Blane films, that reporter Kennedy of the Richmond City Free Press appeared in 37 stories published in Black Mask and other pulp magazines, pp. 7-8. “The Torchy Blane series is the only series of feature films ever produced by Hollywood about a journalist,” he writes (not counting Clark Kent in the guise of Superman), p. 1.
[25] Zinman, David, Saturday Afternoon at the Bijou (Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY, 1973), p. 439. Zinman concludes: “Until Torchy Blane appeared on the screen, most movies portrayed women reporters as gushy, homely old maids or sour, masculine-looking feminists.”
[26] David Zinman, p. 440.
[27]Torchy Blane manages to keep McLane hanging for nine films. At the end of the series, there is no indication that she’s ready to settle down and give up the newspaper business, but audiences of the time seemed convinced that if given the chance, she would give up everything for marriage and family.
[28] Some prominent examples include Joan Crawford (Bonnie Jordan, cub reporter in Dance, Fools, Dance, 1931); Fay Wray (Marcia Collins, reporter for The Press in The Finger Points, 1931); Loretta Young (Gallagher, reporter in Platinum Blonde, 1931); Glenda Farrell (Florence Dempsy, reporter in Mystery of the Wax Museum, 1933); Bette Davis (Ellen Garfield, reporter in Front Page Woman, 1935); Jean Arthur (Louise “Babe” Bennett, reporter in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 1936); Joan Blondell (Timmy Blake, reporter for The Morning Express in Back in Circulation, 1937); Barbara Stanwyck (Ann Mitchell, columnist, The Bulletin in Meet John Doe, 1940; Elizabeth Lane, columnist, Smart Housekeeping Magazine in Christmas in Connecticut, 1945; Regina Forbes, syndicated columnist in To Please a Lady, 1950); Rosalind Russell (Hildy Johnson, reporter in His Girl Friday, 1940); Angela Lansbury (Kay Thorndyke, publisher, Thorndyke Publications in State of the Union, 1948); Patricia Neal is Alice Kingsly, reporter in Washington Story, 1952); Claudette Colbert (Prudence Webb, editor-publisher, The Fort Ralston Clarion, Fort Ralston, Texas, in Texas Lady, 1955); Shirley Jones (Jenny Dolan, reporter in The Lives of Jenny Dolan, 1975); Jane Fonda (Kimberly Wells, TV reporter-anchor, KXLA, Channel 3 in The China Syndrome, 1979); Sally Field (Megan Carter, reporter, The Miami Standard in Absence of Malice, 1981); Holly Hunter (Jane Craig, producer, TV network news in Broadcast News, 1987); Geena Davis (Gale Gayley, Channel 4 news reporter in Hero, 1992); Julia Roberts (Sabrina Peterson, cub reporter in I Love Trouble, 1994); Nicole Kidman (Suzanne Stone, weathercaster in To Die For, 1995); Michelle Pfeiffer (Tally Atwater, TV news reporter and anchor in Up Close & Personal, 1996); Courtney Cox (Gale Weathers, field reporter for Top Story in Scream, 1996; Scream II, 1997, Scream III, 2000); Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw, New York columnist in Sex and the City, 1999-2003; Drew Barrymore (Josie “Josie Grossie” Geller in Never Been Kissed, 1999); Nora Dunn (Adriana Cruz, TV correspondent in Three Kings, 1999).
[29] Donna Born, p. 15. In 1943, Born writes, “60 percent of all Americans approved of married women working… Five years earlier, 80 percent had disapproved.”
[30] Donna Born, p. 16.
[31] Donna Born, p. 22.
[32] Donna Born sums up the image of the woman journalist as one that “moves from that of a relatively strong, capable woman in the earliest period (1890-1920) to a less competent, more emotional, feminine woman in the middle period (1920-1940) who again becomes highly competent but somewhat unreal and irrational during the World War II period, and finally, evolves into a more individualistic, competent, less stereotypical woman striving for professional identity in the face of stereotype in the most recent period (primarily after 1963).” Donna Born, p. 25. The same could be said of the images of the female journalist in movies during these eras.
[33] Loren Ghiglione, p. 126.
[34] There are more than 45 such heroine journalists in continuing series, including Angelina Amalfi (Joanne Pence); Beverly Gray (Clair Blank); Britt Montero (Edna Buchanan); Carmen Ramirez (Lisa Haddock); Cat Austen (Jane Rubino); Cat Marsala (Barbara D’Amato); Charlotte Sams (Alison Glen); Claire Malloy (Joan Hess); Conner Westphal (Penny Warner); Daisy Dalrymple (Carola Dunn); Emma Lord (Mary Daheim); Eve Diamond (Denise Hamilton); Francesca Vierling (Elaine Viets); Georgia Lee Maxwell (Kinky Friedman); Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins (Carolyn Hart); Holly Winter (Susan Conant); Irene Kelly (Jan Burke); Jane Day (Ron Nessen and Johanna Neuman); Jane Winfield (Audrey Peterson); Jemima Shore (Antonia Fraser); Jessica James (Meg O'Brien); Jolie Wyatt (Barbara Burnett Smith); Judith Hayes (Anna Porter); Kay Engles (Triss Stein); Kate Henry (Alison Gordon); Kate Mulcay (Celestine Sibley); Laura Ackroyd (Patricia Hall); Lindsay Gordon (Val McDermid); Lucy Stone (Leslie Meier); Lydia Miller (Eleanor Hyde); Maggie MacGowen (Wendy Hornsby); Margot Fortier (Tony Fennelly); Margaret Barlow (David Osborn); Maxey Burnell (Carol Cail); Merry Kramer (Gayle Roper); Mollie Cates (Mary Willis Walker); Natalie Gold (Jody Jaffe); Nell Matthews (Eve K. Sandstrom); Nyla Wade (Vicki P. McConnell); Penny Parker (Mildred Wirt Benson); Primrose Holland (Jo Bannister); Rain Morgan (Lesley Grant-Adamson); Rebecca Schwartz (Julie Smith); Robin Hudson (Sparkle Hayter); Sally Baxter (Sylvia Edwards); Samantha Adams (Sarah Shankman); Tess Monaghan (Laura Lippman).
[35] A sampling of lesbian journalists in novels includes Lindsay Gordon, the self-proclaimed “cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist” from London (Val McDermid’s Report for Murder, 1987; Common Murder, 1989; Final Edition, 1991; Union Jack, 1993; Deadline for Murder and Booked for Murder, 1996; Conferences Are Murder, 1999; crime reporter Lexy Hyatt (Carlene Miller’s Killing at the Cat, 1998; Mayhem at the Marina, 1999; Reporter on the Run, 2001); Nyla Wade, a journalist from Oregon (Vicki P. McConnell’s Mrs. Porter’s Letter, 1982; The Burnton Windows, 1983; Double Daughter, 1988); Lynn Evans working in Nepal (Claudia McKay’s The Kali Connection, 1994); New York City journalist Joyce Ecco (Diane Salvatore’s Love, Zena Beth, 1992); Jane Scott, who writes about horse championships (Franci McMahon’s Night Mare, 2001).
[36] Examples of women in television news appearing in novels include Robin Hudson, a television news reporter in a series of mysteries written by Sparkle Hayter, including What’s a Girl Gotta Do? (1994), Nice Girls Finish Last (1996), Revenge of the Cootie Girls (1997), The Last Manly Man (1998), The Chelsea Girl Murders (2000). Joan Carpenter is co-anchor of St. Louis’ evening news show, “Nightbeat” and deals with arrogant news directors, cutthroat TV critics and jealous co-anchors, but isn’t ready for the twisted psychopath who comes after her (Fan Mail, 1993). A young woman TV reporter and an anchorman investigate two deaths (Molly McKitterick’s Murder in a Mayonnaise Jar, 1993); Katlyn Rome receives the anchor slot on L.A.’s “Six O’Clock News” (Hal Friedman’s A Hunting We Will Go, 1997); Laura Barrett, who seemingly had it all – success as a co-anchor of the national evening news, a charming husband, a beautiful daughter – but she also has a secret past (Emily Listfield’s The Last Good Night, 1997); Cynthia Diamond, a TV news anchorwoman (Jean Heller’s Handyman, 1995); Delia Jamison, a gorgeous woman at the pinnacle of her career, anchor of a network news show in Los Angeles, is being blackmailed (Winston Groom’s Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl, 1999); TV anchor Lacie Wagner is also an investigative TV journalist (Jeannine Kadow’s Burnout, 1999; Dead Tide, 2002); Reporter/anchor Holly Johnston, “a drop-dead-gorgeous new kid on the block striving to prove she's up to the task and more than just eye candy” (Yolanda Joe’s This Just In…, 2000); Madeleine Hunter (“Maddy”) is an award-winning TV anchorwoman (Danielle Steel’s Journey, 2000); Dana Evans is a beautiful young anchorwoman for a Washington, D.C., television network searching for a killer (Sidney Sheldon’s The Sky Is Falling, 2000); Serpentine Williamson needs to lose weight to get the coveted anchor spot in Chicago (Venise T. Berry’s All of Me: A Voluptuous Tale, 2001); news anchorwoman Eliza Blake is the famous face in front of the camera (Mary Jane Clark’s Close to You, 2001).
[37] Examples of other TV female anchors and reporters in films include Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George), a television anchorwoman trapped by crazed animals on a hunting expedition (Day of the Animals, 1977); Betty Rollin, a real-life NBC News correspondent (Mary Tyler Moore) faces breast cancer (First, You Cry, 1978); Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda), a TV reporter-anchor for KXLA, Channel 3 (The China Syndrome, 1979); Hallie Martin (Jane Fonda), a TV newswoman (The Electric Horseman, 1979); Catherine McSweeney (Elizabeth Montgomery), a TV news production assistant, who is terrorized by an assailant (Act of Violence, 1979); Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver) is a TV reporter (Eyewitness, 1981); Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes) is a TV reporter-anchor for “Newspoint” who discovers that her neighbor is a rapist-murderer but can’t prove it (Eyes of a Stranger, 1981); Jamie Douglas (Morgan Fairchild), TV reporter-anchor, who is pursued by a psychotic photographer (The Seduction, 1982); Sharon Martin (Kate Mulgrew) is a TV newscaster who is kidnapped (A Stranger Is Watching, 1982); Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) is a TV news interviewer-commentator chased by a maniac (Visiting Hours, 1982); Margaret Bourke-White (Farrah Fawcett and Candice Bergen) is the real-life photojournalist (Margaret Bourke-White, 1989, and Gandhi, 1982, respectively); Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) is a TV reporter who tries to figure out whatever happened to a missing rock star presumed dead (Eddie and the Cruisers, 1983);Tracy Tzu (Ariane) is a TV reporter who is gang-raped for exposing the Chinese mafia (Year of the Dragon, 1985); Lauren Gartner (Kate Lynch) is a segment producer for a newsmagazine, who is the conscience of the program (Reckless Disregard, 1985); Christine Arnold (Sheree J. Wilson) is a naïve young anchor who will do anything for fame and fortune (News at Eleven, 1986); Augusta “Gussie” Sawyer (Sissy Spacek) is a world-famous photojournalist (Violets Are Blue, 1986); Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) is a TV network news producer in Broadcast News (1987); Patricia Traymore (Lynda Carter) is a TV reporter for Potomac Cable Network (PCN) News searching her past for a killer (Stillwatch, 1987); Gale Gayley (Geena Davis) is a Channel 4 news reporter in Hero (1992); Sabrina Peterson (Julia Roberts) is a cub reporter in I Love Trouble (1994); Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) is a weathercaster in To Die For (1995); Tally Atwater (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a TV news reporter and anchor in Up Close & Personal (1996); Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) is a field reporter for “Top Story” in Scream, 1996; Scream II (1997), Scream III (2000); Josie “Josie Grossie” Geller (Drew Barrymore) is a cub reporter in Never Been Kissed (1999); Adriana Cruz (Nora Dunn) is a TV correspondent in Three Kings (1999); Diana Downs (Mel Harris) is a TV anchor who, at 45, is washed up and thinks cosmetic surgery will give her a new career (Another Pretty Face, 2002). In television, Amy Amanda Allen (Melinda Culea) is a reporter for the Los Angeles Courier Express who joins “The A Team” (1983-1984); Christine Copperfield (Mimi Kennedy) is a fortyish TV anchor worried about her aging looks who drinks a rejuvenating water in “The Twilight Zone: Aqua Vita,” (1986); Theora Jones (Amanda Pays) is the controller (live producer) for Network 23 in “Max Headroom” (1987); Kelby Robinson (Helen Shaver) is a TV anchor-reporter on “WIOU” (1990-1991); Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is a New York columnist in Sex and the City (1999-2003); Janet LeClaire (Myndy Crist) is a reporter who wins the job of co-anchor; Jamie Templeton (Rowena King) is an ace investigative reporter, and Rachel Glass (Lisa Ann Walter) is the fast-talking news producer on the 24-hour news channel, I-24, in “Breaking News” (2002). In addition, there are more than 3,000 anonymous female journalists who show up in films and TV movies since the birth of these media.
[38] The theme was used repeatedly. On television, for example, an episode of “Anything but Love” (1990), featured magazine writer Hannah Miller (Jamie Lee Curtis) giving an aspiring young journalist (Courtney Thorne-Smith) a shot at working at the magazine, but the woman ends up stabbing her in the back. In Lethal Charm (aka Dangerous Woman, 1991), the veteran reporter-anchor (Barbara Eden) fights off a former homecoming queen (Heather Locklear) trying to take her place. On a “Saturday Night Live” in 1989, shakeups at NBC News were likened to “All About Eve” in a skit called “All About Deborah Norville” with Jane Pauley as the veteran being threatened.
[39] Twenty-three years later, Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) returned to television. She has grown up to be an in-studio producer at ABC News, but quit her job in 1992 so she could spend more time with her daughter. Now Mary Richards Cronin – she had married an aspiring politician – is widowed and left penniless because her husband had overextended the family finances on his risky loans for his campaigns. Even Mary’s original theme has been updated. She has gone off to Paris to recover from the sudden death of her husband and returns to find her only daughter has moved out, quit college and wants to be a stand-up comedian. Luckily her best friend, Rhoda, divorced from a French husband and now a photographer trying to get together a show, comes to New York just in time to help her get through these crises. She, too, has one daughter who doesn’t understand her mother. When Mary finds out she is broke, she says she’ll just get a job. The daughter says, “You’ve been out of the news business for a really long time, and just between you and me you’re not getting any younger.” A job interviewer tells her that her resume is very impressive, but then asks her how old she is. When Mary says 60, the interview is over. In the interviews that follow, Mary goes from 60 to 58 to her mid-fifties, to “how old do I look?” Ageism is alive and well in New York City. She and Rhoda imagine her in a variety of odd-ball and silly jobs from a dog walker to a woman trying to park cars in a downtown garage, to trying to get customers to enroll in a new long-distance telephone carrier to dressing as a giant pickle at a market promotion. No jobs. No money. And Mary Richards is getting a little scared when she walks into the WNYT newsroom and talks to the man in charge, Jonath Semeir (Elon Gold). Mary is hired and proves that she hasn’t forgotten the news values she learned in Minneapolis as she applies them to a harsh, new world of TV news.
[40] Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford) is a former Miss America, the inexperienced cub reporter trying to earn her stripes. She admires Brown and eventually wins her respect and the respect of her colleagues. But when Brown, in an early episode, says to her, “Corky, if it will make you feel any better, I tasted success at a pretty young age and I had some of the same fears you do. But then look at all I've experienced since then.” Sherwood tearfully responds: “You became an alcoholic, you had to dry out at Betty Ford, you had an illegitimate child, I'm looking at my future…go way…go way…” and she starts crying.
[41] In a memorable episode in 1989, the thin line between reality and fiction disappears completely. The storyline has Brown appearing in a situation comedy set in a newsroom about an anchorwoman (Morgan Fairchild as Julia St. Martin, an actress hired to play Kelly Green) on a live weekly magazine show. Back at the office, she sees Connie Chung coming out of the elevator. The two journalists greet each other. Brown asks her, “What brings you to town?” Chung: “I was just here for some bureau meetings. Hey, I saw you on TV last night.” Brown: “Really, what did you think?” Chung: “Murphy, can I be honest with you? I think it's wrong for a journalist of your stature to appear in a sitcom. Once you cross that line, you undermine your credibility. I feel so strongly about that.” Brown: “Well, Connie, that sounds awful noble and righteous but I bet if you'd been in my place and those network people came to you begging you to help their show and, yes, offering you the chance to do something a little different, a little intriguing, something tells me you'd be singing a different tune. I bet I know what you would have told them.” Chung: “Exactly what I did tell them, no thanks,” and Chung walks out.
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