This week on C-SPAN's Lectures in History podcast, a class on women journalists in late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Iowa State University professor Tracy Luke describes the careers of some pioneers such as Nellie Bly and Dorothy Dix,

and the societal pressures they faced while trying to balance work and family.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for being here today.

Today's lecture is about American women journalists of the late 19th century.

This is one of my absolute favorite things to talk about, as I'm sure you all can imagine.

So I'm just going to dive right into it.

The title of today's talk is Stunt Reporters and Sob sisters. And that's because these labels represent

a new kind of job that emerged for women at the end of the 19th century. And I want to tell you

the story of how some pretty bold and remarkable women seized the opportunities created by the circumstances

of their time to carve out a public space for themselves and to make a voice for themselves

and for others when women's voices were not welcomed or respected that much.

So history is always the story of individuals responding creatively to the conditions and

circumstances in which they live.

And so to really understand how this unfolded and how this new type of job, that being

a newspaper reporter in some of the biggest cities of the country, to understand how this came

about, we really have to back up and talk about the business of journalism in the 1800s.

And specifically, I want to talk about a new business model that emerged in the 1830s, called the Penny Press.

Okay? This was a new type of newspaper that began in New York City, right?

Any ideas why it would have been called the penny press?

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