Out on Assignment - by Alice Fahs (Paperback)

About the Book

Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space

Book Synopsis

Out on Assignment illuminates the lives and writings of a lost world of women who wrote for major metropolitan newspapers at the start of the twentieth century. Using extraordinary archival research, Alice Fahs unearths a richly networked community of female journalists drawn by the hundreds to major cities--especially New York--from all parts of the United States.

Newspaper women were part of a wave of women seeking new, independent, urban lives, but they struggled to obtain the newspaper work of their dreams. Although some female journalists embraced more adventurous reporting, including stunt work and undercover assignments, many were relegated to the women's page. However, these intrepid female journalists made the women's page their own. Fahs reveals how their writings--including celebrity interviews, witty sketches of urban life, celebrations of being "bachelor girls," advice columns, and a campaign in support of suffrage--had far-reaching implications for the creation of new, modern public spaces for American women at the turn of the century. As observers and actors in a new drama of independent urban life, newspaper women used the simultaneously liberating and exploitative nature of their work, Fahs argues, to demonstrate the power of a public voice, both individually and collectively.

Review Quotes

[Fahs has] done [herself] proud, producing scholarship about topics long overdue, researching primary and secondary sources with energy and insight, maintaining sensitivity to race and ethnicity as well as gender, and writing with skill and deep commitment to the narratives [she] bring[s] to life.--Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

A century ago, there was a rich network of women journalists among the country's abundant newspapers. They forged new identities both for themselves and for the print culture they created. They have long deserved this exploration.--Library Journal

A gift to journalism historians. Fahs seems to have unearthed every single newspaper story with a female byline appearing in a mainstream big-city paper between the mid-1880s and about 1910.--Women's Review of Books

A highly useful book. Every academic library should own a copy, and many researchers will enjoy it simply because it is a good read.--Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

A most informative and enjoyable read. Highly recommended. Upper-division graduates through faculty.--Choice

A richly detailed account of the hundreds of young female journalists who entered newspaper work in New York and other major American cities in the early 1900s.--Red Weather Review blog

An accessible cultural history. . . . Readers with an interest in media history as well as in women's studies will find this to be an enjoyable and character-driven scholarly book.--Library Journal

Fahs suggests that the legacy of this half-forgotten generation stretched beyond journalism.--Columbia Journalism Review

Give[s] readers a new way of looking at women journalists' actual contribution to both journalism specifically and society more generally. . . . Aspiring historians would be well served to learn from Fahs' approach.--American Journalism

Offers a fresh perspective for evaluating the history of women in journalism.--Journal of American History