Nellie Bly and Investigative Journalism for Kids: Mighty Muckrakers from the Golden Age to Today, with 21 Activities
FOREWORD n the early 1990s when my daughter was in mid dle school I set out at her suggestion to write a detailed biography of the life of Nellie Bly This was no easy task in those days The newspapers that made her famous had been out of business for many years There was no Internet to ease finding records of her work Nellie Bly left no personal archive of papers or letters and she had no children to preserve her legacy Even the four books she published during the 1880s and 1890s were long out of circulation They could only be found at a few big city libraries Today two decades after my book was published'm happy that it remains a go to source for learning about Nellie Bly and her place in both women's and journalism history The experience of getting involved with Nellie Bly continues to be gratifying I've learned how many middle school aged children and present day reporters and authors still find her story inspiring just as I did as a schoolgirl and as my own daughter did a generation later I see it in the enthusiasm of those who compete for National History Day honors
year after year or even the graduate students I encounter who base their master's projects or disser tations on her life and impact I see it in the numer ous books about her that have been published in the last two decades and in the revival of her best news paper stories on the Web I see it in the documentary about her life that is still widely available and in the plays and musicals and one woman shows that con tinue to be produced about her Nellie Bly’s image appears on a commemorative US postage stamp there are Nellie Bly artifacts on display at the Newseum in Washington DC and she at last has her rightful place in the National Women's Hall of Fame Now 150 years after Bly’s birth comes this won derful historically grounded account of Nellie Bly’s life and the muckrakers of her era It includes an exciting array of activities and insight into why we continue to find this woman so remarkable a century and a half after her birth Energy rightly applied and directed will accom plish anything That is a Nellie Bly maxim one of the many she not only said but made it her business to live Here's to Nellie Bly and to Ellen Mahoney for bringing her to you anew BROOKE KROEGER author of Nellie Bly Daredevil Reporter Feminist
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TIME LINE 1864 Elizabeth Jane Cochran later known as Nellie Bly is born in Cochran’s Mills Pennsylvania on May 5 1865 The Civil War which started in 1861 ends 1870 Elizabeth's father dies unexpectedly 1879 Elizabeth attends Indiana State Normal School in Indiana Pennsylvania Elizabeth's family moves to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 1880 1885 Elizabeth is hired by the Pittsburgh Dispatch and begins using her pen name Nellie Bly 1886 Nellie travels to Mexico for six months as a Pittsburgh Dispatch foreign correspondent to investigate and write about the country 1887 Nellie relocates to New York City and is hired as a reporter by Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World Her first assignment is to go undercover at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island in New York Nellie publishes Ten Days in a Mad House as
