10 influential female journalists that you didn’t know about…
Within many countries, the majority of high profile journalists and editors remain male; so it’s time we celebrate some of the great women in the industry!
Although there have been considerable changes of the prospects for women working in the media in the past few decades, women are still noticeably in the minority in the top journalistic roles, despite making up the majority of journalism students.
However there are a few female pioneers in the industry who light up the way for us all! Are you looking for some inspiration to light up your January? I know I am. Journalism is filled with fascinating women, so let’s take a look at who has left a dent in not only the industry but the world too.
Nellie Bly
Born Elizabeth Cochran in 1854.
Picture this; in 1887 Nellie Bly was admitted to Blackwell’s Island (known today as Roosevelt’s Island), New York city’s asylum for the insane. All of the papers at the time covered a story of the mysterious girl who was ‘undoubtedly insane’ with the exception of The New York World. Because Nellie Bly was their undoubtedly sane reporter on her first assignment. Bly exposed the horrendous conditions of the asylum. This was a new kind of investigative journalism. She went on to break records as the first to circumnavigate around the world in 72 days.
Veronica Guerin
Guerin became a household name as the fearless crime reporter at Ireland’s bestselling newspaper The Sunday Independent. She was shot at, threatened and attacked a number of times. However she remained committed to defending the public’s right to know. She unearthed groundbreaking stories on the murderers and drug lords of Dublin’s criminal underworld. She died on 26 June 1996 when one of two men on a motorcycle fired six rounds from a pistol at close range as she waited in her car at a traffic light just outside Dublin. Her death led to more than 150 arrests and crackdown on organized crime gangs.
Evelyn Cunningham
“Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors” — Evelyn Cunningham
Cunningham was a correspondent and then editor of the Pittsburgh Courier an African American newspaper which played a crucial role in the civil rights movement. She tackled the social injustice that mainstream media never addressed.
Ariel Levy
Twenty-five percent of women will miscarry and no one ever talked about it. In 2013 Levy reported on behalf of The New Yorker Magazine a story that broke taboo by sharing her experience of miscarriage. The feature broke boundaries as it was in a serious literary publication rather than a parenting magazine.
Lydia Cacho
“I have been beaten and demonized in the public eye. Yet I haven’t taken a step back, not because I am unaware of the dangers surrounding me. Fear is all too real and violence remains an efficient means by which to silence people like me. But my strength comes from girls and their power has become my own.”
One of the most fearless journalists in Mexico, sparking scandal in her country after she wrote a book claiming prominent business men had conspired to protect a pedophilia ring. Even now her reports on sexual abuse of women and children draws attention to injustice around the world. However she lives in the shadow of danger and several have attempted to murder her. She was the first woman to testify at the supreme court after being raped and beaten for her reporting. She continues even now to report on corruption in Mexico and across the globe.
Ethel Payne
“The first lady of the black press”
There were few black reporters in Washington D.C when Chicago Defender reporter Ethel Payne arrived. Not to mention a lack of female black reporters covering the White House. Ethel was known as the ‘first lady of the black press’ and became the first female African American commentator employed by a national network, when CBS hired her in 1972. She covered key events in the civil rights movement and earned a reputation as an aggressive journalist when she asked President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he planned to ban segregation in interstate travel.
Ann Leslie
“She’s filed stories in more than 70 countries”
Leslie is considered a unique force in journalism. She’s filed stories in more than 70 countries. The 73 year-old has reported on some of the most significant events of the late 20th century such as when the Berlin Wall came down and Nelson Mandela’s release. She has a talent for being everywhere; one of the greatest foreign correspondents of all time.
Margaret Fuller
Fuller was the first woman to write serious literary criticsm in American Journalism, the first to use the library at Harvard University and America’s first feminist. Fuller passed away at 40 years old but in spite of this she accomplished many firsts and became the editor of The Transcendentalist Journal and The Dial subsequently.
Barbara Walters
In 1976 Barbara Walters became the first woman to anchor one of the daily American networks. Her interview style is legendary. Thowing her subjects off guard with intensely researched, pointed questions mixed with more abstract questions.
Her most famous interview is with Monica Lewinksy in 1999. In addition to this she has also interviewed Vladimir Putin and stars such as Michael Jackson.
Mary Garber
Sports Journalism was a man’s world in 1946. Female sports writers were banned from press boxes and locker room interviews. As a result of this coaches often acted condescendingly towards Garber. So Garber changed all of that by paving the way for female sports writers of the future. At first she covered high school sports and then moved on to college atheletes before replacing the sports editor when he joined the Navy on a wide range of sports for the Twin Cities Sentinel then (The Winston-Salem) and The Winston-Salem Journal.
“Not because I had any ability in sports,” Garber once told the Women’s Sports Foundation, “but because it was the war, and every man was in the armed forces.”
In June 2005, Garber became the first woman to receive the Associated Press Sports Editors Red Smith award.
