Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman)

Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman was born on May 5, 1864, in Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania, a small town near Pittsburgh. The town was named after her father, Michael Cochran, who was a mill owner, judge and lawyer.

After reading stories in Pittsburgh Dispatch that stated women belonged at home spending their days toiling away at domestic tasks, Cochrane wrote an angry response to Dispatch with the signature, “Lonely Orphan Girl.” Dispatch editor, George A. Madden was impressed with Cochrane’s fiery letter that he offered a regular reporting job.

Madden also gave her, her pen name Nellie Bly, a misspelling of Stephen Foster’s popular song, “Nelly Bly.”

Bly, only agreed to write for Dispatch as long as she could cover stories that were considered important in her eyes, such as: divorces, the city’s slums houses and the working conditions for the “working girls.”

Bly was sent to Mexico to report on the stark contrast between the rich and poor citizens of Mexico. She composed 30 dispatches and complied them into her first novel, Six Months in Mexico.

When returning home from Mexico, Bly decided to head to the Big Apple and marched herself right into the doors of Joseph Pulitzer’s office and she was hired at his paper, New York World.

John Cockerill, managing editor at the World, gave Bly her first stunt story. She went undercover at a women’s insane asylum in order to get the inside report.

Her readers, mostly women were so impressed with her bravery that they wrote to the World begging for Bly’s assistance because they found her to be unstoppable.

However, her most famous stunt was when she managed to travel the only in 72 days, breaking the record of Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. The World documented her entire journey. While this record made her an international star, none of her reporting was able to live up to it.

Bly’s significance to the journalistic field was that she became a role model for women reporters, showcasing that they could be just as fearless and daring as men in the field.

 Works Cited

Hanson, Ralph E. Mass Communication: Living in a Media World. 4th ed. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2014. 128. Print.

"Nellie Bly." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.

Ritchie, Donald A. American Journalists: Getting the Story. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. 138-41. Print.