Introduction to Journalism
The Indiana State Normal School
"Indiana State Normal School," circa 1929, Indiana Historical Society.
THE BEGINNING
Elizabeth Jane Cochran(e), born in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania in 1864, grew up in a wealthy household with her mother and father, until her father, the founder of the town, died when Cochran was six. Because of her father’s sudden and unexpected death, the family was left without claim to the estate and were forced to flee Cochran’s Mills. Cochran later enrolled at the Indiana Normal School in Indiana, Pennsylvania, but soon had to drop out because of constant financial struggle.
She then moved to Pittsburgh where she got her start in journalism after writing a letter in response to a newspaper article written by Erasmus Wilson from the Pittsburgh Dispatch, who claimed women were only useful doing duties in the home and working women were ‘a monstrosity’. Cochran’s letter, a rebuttal to the article, caught the attention of editor George Madden who then offered her a position, impressed by her writing.
"It was in 1885, in the month of January, perhaps, that a letter written on a large sheet of paper came to the Dispatch office addressed to the editor. To have been judged by its appearance it would have gone into the wastebasket, because there was no style about it."
- Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, 1890
Dispatch Building, History of Allegheny Co., Pennsylvania 1876, Phi Gamma Delta
Cochran began to work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch for a rate of five dollars per week. She adopted the pen name ‘Nellie Bly’ and her writing was mainly focused on the cons of sexist beliefs. However, when Bly was moved to the women's page in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, she sought to find a job writing for a page that was targeted at both men and women. After moving to New York City in 1886 and struggling to find a newspaper that would even consider employing a woman, Bly marched into the office of The New York World, asking to write about immigrants, but the editor, Joseph Pulitzer challenged her instead to write an exposé on the conditions of the women's mental asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Unknown to Bly at the time, her exposé on the insane asylum would be the ultimate launch to her journalism career.
The Pittsburgh Dispatch Building (left), The New York World Building (right)
Newspaper Row, New York City, Detroit Publishing Co., c. 1905, Library of Congress.