Title of the Blog Entry
01/20/2010
by Arthur Fritz
I’ve decided that you are getting a blog. This is where it will live on the home page. You will have a short into paragraph and then a read more button.
Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864 in the town of Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania. The town was named for her father, Judge Michael Cochran. Early in life, Elizabeth earned the nickname "Pink" because her mother routinely dressed her in that color. Judge Cochran passed away when Elizabeth was just six. Elizabeth's mother, Mary Jane, would re-marry three years later to a man who was very abusive, forcing her to go through the tortuous process of divorce. This left the family on very hard times. Elizabeth attended Indiana Normal in hopes of becoming a teacher. However, she could not afford tuition and spent only one semester at the school.
In 1880, Mary Jane moved her family to Pittsburgh. Elizabeth assisted her mother with duties around their house which they had opened to boarders. In January of 1885, Nellie read an editorial in The Pittsburgh Dispatch entitled "What Girls Are Good For." The article admonished women for even attempting to have an education or career, suggesting they should stray no further than the home. This infuriated Elizabeth to the point of writing a scathing reply that she signed "Little Orphan Girl." Dispatch editor George Madden was so impressed by the reply, he placed an ad for the Little Orphan Girl to visit the newspaper. When Elizabeth introduced herself to Madden, the editor offered her the opportunity to write a rebuttal piece to be published. Elizabeth went home and wrote her first newspaper article "The Girl Puzzle." Impressed again, Madden offered Elizabeth a full-time job writing under the name Nellie Bly (the title of a popular song by Stephen Foster).
At the time women who worked at newspapers almost always wrote articles on gardening, fashion or society. Nellie Bly eschewed these topics for hard pressing stories on the poor and oppressed. Drawing from her mother's experience, she wrote on the inherent disadvantages women had in divorce proceedings. She also wrote numerous articles on the lives of poor women who worked in Pittsburgh's bottle factories. Nellie's articles fascinated readers, but drew criticism from the business community. When companies threatened to pull advertising from the Dispatch because of her articles, Nellie was assigned to a gardening story. When she turned in the article, she included her resignation.
