Out on Assignment by Fahs Alice;

Author:Fahs, Alice;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2011-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

Zona Gale (Wisconsin Historical Society, image ID: 11760)

Most of Gale’s stories did not involve “stunts,” however. As a “regular” reporter she wrote urban sketches, covered strikes, did interviews, and covered several criminal cases. Her assignments remind us not only that newspaper women on sensational papers often did a mix of “stunt” and “regular” reporting, but also that there was plenty of excitement to be had in regular reporting. In February 1901 Gale wrote excitedly to her parents in Wisconsin about a notable success she had just had with an article on a notorious criminal case, which had immediately earned her another heady assignment. Enclosing a clipping, she told them facetiously that it had “started me on the highroad to something or other—I don’t know what yet.” She was proud that the World was sending her out again “with decent speeches” of praise. Gale’s new assignment involved a shooting in Arlington, New Jersey, where a minister accused of sexually attacking a woman in his congregation had been shot by the woman’s husband. Gale was to do a feature: “They wanted me to get what I could about the history of the two people.”73

Gale regaled her parents with an account of her adventures in getting the story: “I got here Wednesday night at 7:30—and tried to get in at the boarding house where the woman was staying, but I couldn’t. She was cautious. The whole town was alert and warlike against reporters and detectives. They all acted like idiots—as if the newspaper people were trying to do them harm.” (In fact, of course, the townspeople were acting quite sensibly if they did not want public exposure.)74

Finding a room at another boardinghouse, Gale announced her “intention of giving some morning talks on Wagner” (the composer—clearly a “cover” to allay any suspicion that she was a reporter). “I didn’t sleep any all night,” she wrote; “I was worried for fear I wouldn’t do it right and would[n’t] get anything.” The next day, “I made about 20 calls and finally I ended by bringing the confectioner’s wife home to dinner with me and pumping her for 2 hours afterward. She is a member of the same guild to which Mrs. Barker [the woman who accused the minister of sexual attack] used to belong in the minister’s church. She went home after 9, and I sat up and wrote 17 pages—finished about 11, got up Friday” and “mailed my letter on the 8:30 train to the address of the city editor of the World so not to use the name of the newspaper on the envelope, and went on working scared to death for fear they couldn’t use a word I had done and overwhelmed with the responsibility of living up to the $25 they gave me for expenses.” The very level of detail in this letter—taking her parents step by step through her reporting—underlined Gale’s excitement.75

“At 3:30,” she continued, “when the afternoon papers came in I slipped down to the newstand [sic] to see if

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