Sensational by Kim Todd

Author:Kim Todd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

“Nellie Bly as an Elephant Trainer” in the World, February 23, 1896

“Nellie Bly as an Elephant Trainer,” World, February 23, 1896 (University of Minnesota Libraries)

Pulitzer, rarely in the office, sent letters from across the globe, scrambling to keep a handle on the World from Maine, Germany, Barbados. In the spring, the World launched a midnight edition and cast about for other ways to check Hearst’s momentum, regardless of cost. It dropped the price to one cent, matching the Journal. While Pulitzer was impatient to crush his nemesis, he also had his doubts about the paper’s direction, sensitive to criticism that the sensationalism went too far. Rival papers began to grumble about the larger headlines, the focus on crime, the showy illustrations, the breathless tone. Comics increasingly included racial stereotypes. Articles detailed very dubious scientific theories, like the existence of butterfly women on the planet Venus. Pulitzer kept after Brisbane to chase Hearst without falling to his level. Avoid “freaks” and “froth,” he urged, “your old energy on new lines will assure you brilliant success & higher reputation.” Pulitzer requested a portrait of recently retired General O. O. Howard, who’d lost an arm fighting for the Union in the Civil War and helped found Howard University, on the front page of the Sunday World. But Brisbane, who feared the general would mouth clichés—very decent, very boring—wrote back: “Sorry we did not have that O. O. Howard picture and interview. Instead, on the front page, I had a wonderful picture of Kate Swan in the electric chair and circulation is up 15,000.”

Brisbane had tracked down Kate Swan McGuirk, the astute Washington DC reporter who’d made such a notable scoop with her Lizzie Borden interview. Or she had volunteered herself. Either way, the World hired her, and she became a key element of the publication’s reimagining.

One of McGuirk’s first stunts for the paper tied in with the story of Maria Barbella (also called Barberi), who was on death row for slitting the throat of a man who promised, then refused, to marry her. She was scheduled to be the first woman to die in the electric chair. Brisbane, who had fainted when he witnessed an execution several years before, had taken a sympathetic interest in the Barbella case. Continuing to pursue questions, launched in the Borden trial, about the way a predominantly male justice system treated female criminals, McGuirk visited the prison and went through the experience of being walked from a cell to the electric chair and buckled in, aiming to show what it felt like to be a woman encountering the death penalty.

McGuirk dwelt on facing death surrounded by men, who would dress her, walk with her, and watch. She emphasized that to attach the electrode, the criminal would need to bare a knee. Talking with New York State’s head executioner afterward, she extracted from him the promise that he would never execute a woman. Having achieved this tangible result, she wrote, “I am not sorry that I endured all the strange agonies I did during my experience in the death chair.

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