Journalism Award

The Pulitzer Prize

For over one hundred years, this prize has been awarded to outstanding journalists for achievements in newspaper, magazine, and literature writing and music composition.

The prize, established by Joseph Pulitzer in 1917, seeks to honor those who excel in their field which now includes twenty-nine categories. Each winner receives a certificate and a monetary prize that is now at $15,000.

Pulitzer, born in 1847, became a newspaper publisher and a leading figure in the Democratic Party. The state of New York elected him as a congressman where he crusaded against big business and corruption. He even helped keep the Statue of Liberty in the city of New York.

Pulitzer, a newspaper publisher, willed money to Columbia University to begin a journalism school and to establish the prize. At first, $250,000 was allocated to the prize and scholarships.  He designated four awards in journalism, four awards in letters and drama, one for education, and four scholarships designated as “traveling scholarships.”

The fierce competition between William Randolph Hearst New York Journal and Pulitzer’s New York World led “yellow journalism” with sensationalism, sex, crime, and other graphic horrors. The wide appeal of such journalism eventually led the way for mass-circulation newspapers that depended on advertising revenue rather than the actual price of the paper.

After Pulitzer’s death in 1911, the first prizes were awarded on June 4, 1917. They were considered to be the most notable award that a write could attain. l. At that time, the Chicago Tribune was already a noted newspaper, but Colonel McCormick controlled the newspaper, and he didn’t deem the prize as important or noteworthy, but rather a type of mutual admiration society. The paper didn’t compete for the prize until McCormick’s tenure ended in 1961.

Even the Pulitzer didn’t escape scandal. In 1981, Janet Cooke of The Washington Post won the prize for her story, “Jimmy’s World.” It told the story of a eight-year-old heroin addict. The mayor of D.C. at that time even said they knew who Jimmy was and that he was in treatment for his addiction. When Cooke finally admitted that her story was all fiction, the mayor had to retract the statement much to his embarrassment, and the police called off a citywide search for the boy. The foundation stripped Cooke of her prize.

Almost four decades later, the ramifications of Cooke’s story are still being felt by women in the field of journalism.

Journalists are not the only award winners. Some of the prize winners include names like Charles Lindbergh, Sylvia Plath,

and John F. Kennedy. The most recent winner of the prize for journalism is Caroline Fraser for her story, “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder in 2018. “Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir” won the prize in 1997 for Frank McCourt and was made into a movie that opened to mixed reviews.

Now, a little over a century later, the prize will once again be awarded this month on Monday, April 14, 2:00 PM – 7:00 PM.

Winning Photography: https://bit.ly/2TXJWyS

Below are pictures that won the award for photography. These pictures became embedded in our culture as iconic symbols of their times. Almost anybody you ask could tell you the significance of the photo.  Can you identify the occasion?

Martha Rogers is a free-lance writer and multi-published author from Realms Fiction of Charisma Media and Winged Publications. She was named Writer of the Year at the Texas Christian Writers Conference in 2009. She is a member of ACFW and writes the weekly Verse of the Week for the ACFW Loop. ACFW awarded her the Volunteer of the Year in 2014. Her first electronic series from Winged Publications, Love in the Bayou City of Texas, debuted in the spring of 2015.  Martha is a frequent speaker for writing workshops and the Texas Christian Writers Conference. She is a retired teacher and lives in Houston with her husband, Rex. Their favorite pastime is spending time with their twelve grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Nellie Bly

Adventurous and Daring!

by Martha Rogers
In high school, I was on the newspaper staff and loved my journalism class. In college, I took more journalism courses to improve my writing skills and journalistic ability.

One of the women we studied was Nellie Bly, a pioneer in journalism and what we might call today an “investigative” reporter.

She was born as Elizabeth Cochran on May 4, 1864, in Cochran’s Mills Pennsylvania. She began her career in 1880 at the age of sixteen, writing columns for women on things pertaining to the home, gardening, society and child rearing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. As was customary, she used a pen name for her writing. She chose Nelly Bly from the Stephen Foster Song, but it was misspelled in the paper as Nellie and stayed that way. Her editor was so impressed by her writing that she was able to convince him to begin investigating new topics such as divorce and its effect on women. She even went to Mexico for six months as a special correspondent.

From Pittsburgh, she moved on to New York around 1887 as Nellie Bly and worked on assignments at the New York World, John Pulitzer’s flagship newspaper.

Several events as a reporter there cause her to stand out as a journalist. The first was her assignment to go undercover as a mental patient. She so impressed the editors that they gave her a top assignment. According to Nellie, “I was asked by the World if I could have myself committed to one of the asylums for the insane in New York, with a view to writing a plain and unvarnished narrative of the treatment of the patients therein.”

Nellie found getting committed to the asylum to be rather easy. She used the name Bly Brown to take a room at a cheap boarding house where she questioned and imitated the women who seemed the most insane to her. Sure enough, she was deemed insane, and the matron of the house had Nellie escorted by the police to the Essex Market Police where a rather impatient judge name Duffy declared her to be insane. He ordered her to the insane ward at Bellevue Hospital, and a few days later, she boarded a ferry for the island in the company of unwashed and uncomprehending women. One of the attendants told her that once she got to that place, she’d never get out of it.

She spent a number of days Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum and took careful notes of both her own experiences and those of other inmates. She painted such a dire picture of the mistreatment of inmates and how they experienced a host of abusive treatment from cold baths to confinement in small, locked rooms infested by vermin.

She dropped her act of acting crazy and tried to present herself as mentally competent. That went nowhere until the newspaper sent an attorney to arrange for her release. On Sunday, October 9, 1887, the World ran the first installment of her story, and Bly became an overnight sensation. The psychiatrists who had diagnosed her to begin with, apologized profusely, but it didn’t stop the reporting.

One of her quotes from her notes:

A grand jury was impaneled to investigate the abuses and poor treatment reported by Nellie. What she discovered became an embarrassment to the city aldermen, and they quickly appropriated a million dollars a year to correct the abuses Bly exposed. About one month after the expose hit, many of the problems she reported were improved. Better living and sanitary conditions were among them as well as more nourishing meals. Even the most abusive nurses and physicians were fired and replaced.

She later published a book based on her experiences. Ten Days in a Mad-House was a slim book but

remains a classic in the annals of psychiatry and warns against inhumane treatment of the mentally ill.

Another major event in her career occurred when she broke the record set by Jules Verne’s fictional Phineas Fogg in the novel, Around the World in 80 Days. In 1889, it was the fastest journey in her era and she made it around the world in seventy-two days. She became famous for it, and it was widely reported around the world.

Nellie went from one journalistic success to the next with a series of dispatches from the Eastern Front during WWI and her reports on the Women’s suffrage movement.

Reporting wasn’t her only world. In 1895 she married an elderly Robert Seaman, a wealthy man who ran the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company. Due to his failing health, she retired from journalism to take over the reins of his company. He died in 1904, but carried on with the company.

Nellie Bly died at the age of 57 in 1922. Many have wondered what triumphs and good deeds this woman could have accomplished if she’d lived longer. She will long be remembered as the woman who helped change the plight of the mentally ill. Sadly, the treatment of the mentally ill still needs a great deal of attention. 


Martha Rogers is a multi-published author and writes a weekly devotional for ACFW. Martha and her husband Rex live in Houston, Texas where they are active members of First Baptist Church. They are the parents of three sons and grandparents to eleven grandchildren and great-grandparents to five. Martha is a retired teacher with twenty-eight years teaching Home Economics and English at the secondary level and eight years at the college level supervising student teachers and teaching freshman English. She is the Director of the Texas Christian Writers Conference held in Houston in August each year, a member of ACFW, ACFW WOTS chapter in Houston, and a member of the writers’ group, Inspirational Writers Alive.

Find Martha at: www.marthawrogers.com,

Twitter: @martharogers2 Facebook: Martha Rogers Author

Bess Whitehead Scott

News Reporter and so much more

By Martha Rogers

 

As a journalism student serving as reporter on our high school newspaper, I learned about Bess Whitehead Scott, but never thought much about again until recently when I read an article about a Baylor girl being awarded a scholarship named for Bess Whitehead. I did some research and learned more about her fascinating life. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I could find of her. 

Bess Whitehead was born near Blanket, Texas on a farm in 1890.  After her father’s death, her widowed mother managed the farm and Bess’ eight brothers and sisters. Although facing enormous obstacles, Beth studied hard. She wrote her first poem at age six and the love of writing buried itself deep in her heart. Later she won literary awards for her poetry and essays.

Despite poverty and her hearing impairment, Bess graduated from high school in 1908 and went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She graduated from there in 1912 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. After graduation, she taught English and Latin at a high school in Center, Texas.

She moved to Houston and began teaching English and Latin in a Houston high school, but her sights were set on the world of journalism. In 1915, the world faced a great challenge with World War I in Europe and the later involvement of the United States. She wanted to write for the Houston Post, which hired only male reporters.

Not to be thwarted of her ambition, Bess talked her way into a trial run position because she reasoned that men were going to be going off to war for the next few years. That two week trial position at $6 a week marked the beginning of her 77-years of journalism. It also made her the first female reporter ever to be hired by the newspaper.

According to William P. Hobby Jr., who ran the post in the 1960’s, “Bess made it because she understood one of the basic principles of the newspaper business—everyone has story. You have only to discover it and tell it well.”

In her days as a journalist, she covered major events such as disastrous floods and storms as well as the Democratic Convention in 1928. She also interviewed such well-known persons as Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Clark Gable.

In 1917, at the age of twenty-seven, she spent time in Hollywood writing publicity tear sheets for the silent movies of the day and even tried her hand at writing scripts several of which were produced starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

She also married and had two sons, but the marriage ended in divorce and she had to supplement her small income with what she could earn as a reporter.  The wonderful opportunities afforded to women, the handicapped, and single mothers were non-existent. She used her talent and stamina to fight hardships.

During her years in journalism she served various positions such as amusement editor, school editor, religious editor, news reporter for city hall and a columnist. While working as a reporter from 1931 to 1942, she also taught high school journalism in Houston at Milby High School as well as adult night classes in journalism and creative writing. The high school newspaper earned top honors in the state for excellence in journalism when she taught at Milby.

Despite the fact that she never achieved fame or fortune, Bess left an imprint on the world of journalism. She wrote three communication textbooks as well as her autobiography, You Meet Such Interesting People. Bess wrote that book at the age of 98.

Among her awards is the Bess Whitehead Scott Journalism Scholarship set up by the Writers’ League of Texas in honor of her 100^th birthday. At the age of 102, she was recognized as a Distinguished Alumna of Baylor University and two years later inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. She remained active with her writing until her death in 1997 at the age of 107, which is a major accomplishment in itself.

Bess Whitehead Scott is a great example of how determination, courage and hard work along with caring friends, can carry a person past enormous obstacles in life.

Martha's latest release, A House That Love Built is now available on Amazon. A Christmas story to warm the heart.  http://amzn.to/2cOcLMY

Callie Armistead has long dreamed of going away to school and studying medicine. She’s read medical journals and textbooks for several years with that goal in mind and has helped care for the citizens of Pine Grove since the death of their town doctor. When Dr. Penelope Carmichael arrives and settles in as the new doctor, she gives Callie the opportunity to work with her and learn more about medicine. Micah Sellers has been in love with Callie since their school days and is now building a house for her on his farm in hopes she’ll marry him. Callie is touched by Micah’s love, but her love for her work in the infirmary conflicts with her feelings for him. The miracle of a birth at Christmas opens Callie’s eyes and heart to true love. With her heart full of joy and hope she steps into the future God has planned for her with the man she loves.



Martha Rogers is a free-lance writer and multi-published author from Realms Fiction of Charisma Media and Winged Publications. She was named Writer of the Year at the Texas Christian Writers Conference in 2009. She is a member of ACFW and writes the weekly Verse of the Week for the ACFW Loop. ACFW awarded her the Volunteer of the Year in 2014. Her first electronic series from Winged Publications, Love in the Bayou City of Texas, debuted in the spring of 2015.  Martha is a frequent speaker for writing workshops and the Texas Christian Writers Conference. She is a retired teacher and lives in Houston with her husband, Rex. Their favorite pastime is spending time with their eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren