Veronica Esposito
THE GUARDIAN
Wed 31 May 2023
“Getting the cold call email from him was crazy,” said author and journalist Brooke Kroeger, telling me about how her latest project, Undaunted – which recounts the two-century-long story of women in journalism – originated with a phone call from a male editor. “I had some idea of who he was, I was aware of him. I knew he was senior, and I looked him up pretty quick.”
The man in question was Jonathan Segal, a vice-president at Knopf who has published seven books that went on to receive Pulitzer prizes. He was offering Kroeger the assignment of a lifetime. Segal had determined that there was no good trade book available covering the history of women in journalism in the United States, and he was hoping Kroeger would be willing to write it.
“He was looking for a history of women in journalism but couldn’t find one, and he thought this book should exist,” said Kroeger. “You don’t get invitations like that all the time. I mean, this is just not my karma at all.”
Kroeger shared that the only comparable non-academic title she could find was 1936’s Ladies of the Press by Ishbel Ross, a novelist and author of non-fiction books known for bringing to prominence unsung women like Elizabeth Blackwell, who is remembered as the first woman in the US to receive a medical degree. For nearly 100 years, no new book for a wide audience had been published documenting the contributions of women to journalism. It was certainly time for an update, especially considering that, while Ross’s Ladies as a substantial accomplishment, the work can be critiqued for, among other things, not including a single Black woman among the 300 journalists that it celebrates.
With the invitation from Segal, Kroeger prepared to put off her plans for retirement and take on a major new project. She noted that the substantial work on what would eventually become Undaunted was somewhat lightened by her 40-year career as a journalist. “I’ve been working on this material in one way or another for a long time, so I was prepared in a way to write this. And also, I’ve lived a lot of it in its own right, and a lot of my work has traced these avenues. So it wasn’t altogether new.”
Starting in the 1840s with pioneering journalist Margaret Fuller, Undaunted aims to document how women have changed American journalism. This includes, for instance, how women transformed war reporting during the second world war, when they were mostly only permitted to cover the home front. “Most were confined to the civilian story, so, once confined, they made the most of that,” said Kroeger. “They showed initiative and helped create a form, because now I think that’s become as important a part of war reporting as any other, which I don’t think was the case then. That’s a balance that’s tipped.” Kroeger went on to explain how women have also created change in news organizations, transforming how media institutions “change the way you care for the people who do the work”.
Margaret Fuller circa 1840. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
As Kroeger makes clear in the book’s preface, Undaunted is not an attempt to create a new canon so much as it wants to relate how women have managed to succeed in a field that “men have dominated in the 180 years since mass media began”. Guided by questions like “Which stories best illustrated what women were up against in their professional lives?” and “Assuming talent and hard work, how much did background, privilege, strategy, charisma, style, looks, advocacy, connections, or luck figure in their ascent?” the book focuses heavily on stories of transformation and innovation.
“My goal to make present the extent to which a women’s point of view changes institutions,” said Kroeger. “I think I make a pretty good case for how they have changed American journalism. It’s the experiences of women in the field: what they overcame, what they did, what they brought. Those would be the three goals. Not to canonize new people – although it would be great if people get their due. It’s a satellite view, not a helicopter view.”
Another thing that Undaunted demonstrates is that, while a certain number of truly gifted women were able to find a way to succeed in a male-dominated field, it is only recently that the nature of journalism has changed, granting greater equality and access beyond those fortunate few. According to Kroeger, this is something that has only really come about in the past few decades, where women have become less and less of token figures or individuals relegated to certain undesirable beats, instead becoming central players in the field.
“I did an analysis of the Pulitzer prizes won every year – I’m really a nerd, you know, a super nerd,” said Kroeger. “So it takes 20 years for the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize – Anne O’Hare McCormick, 1937 – and then 14 more until Marguerite Higgins wins it for her coverage of the Korean war. Contrast that to analysis I did of the 10 best stories of the year – for 2000 to 2009, four of 10 were by women, and for the next group up to 2020, seven of the 10 were by women. How impressive is that?”
In addition to getting into major transformation in the field of journalism, Undaunted is also a delight for the many personal stories it relates. Kroeger shared how one theme she discovered was that “women are flowering after 40, which I loved about this book!” She was also impressed by the degree to which women were able to make the most of their people skills to succeed despite incredible amounts of bias and sexism. “People like Margaret Fuller, and so many of these women, are master networkers. I feel like that’s really great career advice. I mean, who gets to do that in 1840?!”
Ultimately, Kroeger told me she’s inspired by her own female journalism students, whom she believes represent incredible new talent that will continue to transform journalism in coming decades. And she’s also mindful that the nature of journalism is that it’s mostly meant to disappear – meaning that maybe one of those students will eventually succeed her in writing the next chapter of the story. “Journalism is ephemera, we are meant to disappear, it’s OK, that’s the nature of the work. You can’t feel bad about that, because it’s all about the work today. When someone survives that, it’s really extraordinary.”
Undaunted is out now
As Kroeger makes clear in the book’s preface, Undaunted is not an attempt to create a new canon so much as it wants to relate how women have managed to succeed in a field that “men have dominated in the 180 years since mass media began”. Guided by questions like “Which stories best illustrated what women were up against in their professional lives?” and “Assuming talent and hard work, how much did background, privilege, strategy, charisma, style, looks, advocacy, connections, or luck figure in their ascent?” the book focuses heavily on stories of transformation and innovation.
“My goal to make present the extent to which a women’s point of view changes institutions,” said Kroeger. “I think I make a pretty good case for how they have changed American journalism. It’s the experiences of women in the field: what they overcame, what they did, what they brought. Those would be the three goals. Not to canonize new people – although it would be great if people get their due. It’s a satellite view, not a helicopter view.”
Another thing that Undaunted demonstrates is that, while a certain number of truly gifted women were able to find a way to succeed in a male-dominated field, it is only recently that the nature of journalism has changed, granting greater equality and access beyond those fortunate few. According to Kroeger, this is something that has only really come about in the past few decades, where women have become less and less of token figures or individuals relegated to certain undesirable beats, instead becoming central players in the field.
“I did an analysis of the Pulitzer prizes won every year – I’m really a nerd, you know, a super nerd,” said Kroeger. “So it takes 20 years for the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize – Anne O’Hare McCormick, 1937 – and then 14 more until Marguerite Higgins wins it for her coverage of the Korean war. Contrast that to analysis I did of the 10 best stories of the year – for 2000 to 2009, four of 10 were by women, and for the next group up to 2020, seven of the 10 were by women. How impressive is that?”
In addition to getting into major transformation in the field of journalism, Undaunted is also a delight for the many personal stories it relates. Kroeger shared how one theme she discovered was that “women are flowering after 40, which I loved about this book!” She was also impressed by the degree to which women were able to make the most of their people skills to succeed despite incredible amounts of bias and sexism. “People like Margaret Fuller, and so many of these women, are master networkers. I feel like that’s really great career advice. I mean, who gets to do that in 1840?!”
Ultimately, Kroeger told me she’s inspired by her own female journalism students, whom she believes represent incredible new talent that will continue to transform journalism in coming decades. And she’s also mindful that the nature of journalism is that it’s mostly meant to disappear – meaning that maybe one of those students will eventually succeed her in writing the next chapter of the story. “Journalism is ephemera, we are meant to disappear, it’s OK, that’s the nature of the work. You can’t feel bad about that, because it’s all about the work today. When someone survives that, it’s really extraordinary.”
Undaunted is out now
No comments:
Post a Comment