EOTO #3: Martha Gellhorn

When you Google Martha Gellhorn, you'll often see her name attached to that of writer and journalist Ernest Hemingway. But Gellhorn was more than her marriage to Hemingway; she was an influential novelist, travel writer, and journalist who made a lasting impact in all she achieved. 

On November 8th, 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri, a future star was born. Martha Ellis Gellhorn was born to George and Edna Gellhorn. George was a prominent gynecologist and professor of medicine at Washington University, while Edna was a journalist, reformer, and suffragist who helped found the League of Women Voters. 

Edna was incredibly involved in politics and activism, acting as an officer for nine years in both the St. Louis and Missouri State Equal Suffrage Leagues until the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1919. 

During this time, she participated in a women's rights protest at the Democratic Party's national convention in 1916 named "The Golden Lane." Around 7,000 women attended, wearing white and gold sashes with the words "Votes for Women" written on them. 

In the front row stood little Gellhorn, participating in politics at just 7 years old. This would become a hallmark of her career. 

The Golden Lane protest on June 14, 1916. 

Gellhorn graduated from high school at John Burroughs School in 1926 before enrolling in Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a student there for two years before deciding to move to New York to become a journalist. 

In New York, she worked at the progressive, political magazine New Republic and the Albany Times Union. 

In 1930, Gellhorn headed for Paris, a popular destination for young American writers and artists, determined to become a correspondent. She left the United States with $75 and a typewriter before landing a job with the United Press news service. 

She was eventually let go due to her report of sexual harassment against her by a man from the company. Unlike today, there was little to no protection for women in the workplace, especially from sexual harassment. 

Over the next few years, Gellhorn traveled across Europe, writing for various publications, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Vogue. She wrote about her experiences during this period in her first book, What Mad Pursuit.

When she returned to the United States in the early 1930s, Gellhorn befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, living with the Roosevelts for two months in the White House. There, she spent her evenings helping Roosevelt write correspondence and columns in Women's Home Companion. 

"Martha Gellhorn has an understanding of many people and many situations and she can make them live for us. Let us be thankful she can, for we badly need her interpretation to help understand each other." - First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on Martha Gellhorn in her column, "My Day." 

She was then hired by the trusted deputy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, to work as a field investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. 

She traveled with photojournalist Dorothea Lange throughout the country, documenting the effects of the Great Depression on everyday Americans. These reports later became part of the official government files for the Great Depression. It was this experience that led to her second novel, The Trouble I've Seen. 

This was an opportunity that few women journalists were offered at this time, considering it was such a male-dominated field. This gave Gellhorn the chance to investigate tough topics before she landed a job in foreign correspondence. 

Gellhorn met Hemingway while on a trip to Florida, and it was with Collier's Weekly where the pair decided to report together on the Spanish Civil War. She covered the bombings of Barcelona, the conditions of the civilians, and stories of soldiers in hospitals. 

Chiang Kai-Shek, Ernest Hemingway, and Martha
Gellhorn during the Sino-Japanese War.

In 1940, Gellhorn travelled to China with Hemingway to report on the Second Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan. 

During this time, she also reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler before the war in Czechoslovakia. 

As the Second World War began and intensified, she reported on the war from Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and England. 

"I followed the war wherever I could reach it. I had been sent to Europe to do my job, which was not to report the rears or the woman's angle." - Martha Gellhorn 

In 1944, Gellhorn was determined to continue reporting on the war. The United States military did not want female correspondents reporting from the front lines, so Gellhorn snuck onto an American hospital ship. 

When she landed, Gellhorn helped recover wounded soldiers and acted as a water ambulance, reporting on the everyday life of those affected by the war. On June 6th, 1944, she was one of the only women and journalists to land and report on D-Day, the first day of Operation Overlord. 

After D-Day, she was arrested by British military police and stripped of her accreditation. 

But this, of course, did not stop her. 

She went on to cover major events such as the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, one of the first and longest running concentration camps built in Nazi Germany. 

In her book, The Face of War, she observed the following about Dachau:

"Dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in Europe to hear the news of victory. For surely this war was made to abolish Dachau, and all the other places like Dachau, and everything that Dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever."

She later reported on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. 

TIME recognized Gellhorn as one of Collier's star reporters during World War II because of her spirit and commitment to telling the stories of ordinary people during the war. 

Gellhorn continued to cover almost every war or military conflict following the war, including the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Panama.

"There has to be a better way to run the world, and we had better see that we get it." - Martha Gellhorn. 

After a long battle with liver and ovarian cancer, near blindness, and frail health, Martha Ellis Gellhorn committed suicide on February 15th, 1998, in London. 

Gellhorn was more than just Hemingway's wife; she was one of the first female war correspondents who documented some of the most influential events of the 20th century. She is a role model for aspiring and current female journalists and war correspondents who aim to follow in her footsteps. 

Shock and Awe Movie Review

"There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent, and free media." - Bill Moyers

Left to Right: Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Walter Strobel, and Joe Galloway

Following the true story of Knight Ridder journalists Jonathan Landay and Walter Strobel, Joey Hartstone and Rob Reiner's Shock and Awe tackles the rationale of the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq. 

"If every other news organization wants to be stenographers for the Bush administration, let them. We don't write for people who send other people's kids to war. We write for people whose kids get sent to war." - Rob Reiner as John Walcott

The movie opens with Adam Green, who joined the United States Army to serve after 9/11, where President George W. Bush shifted his focus to Al-Qaeda, claiming that Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction (WMD's). Green had lost his leg shortly after being deployed in Iraq, to which he asks: "How the hell did this happen?"

John Walcott, the bureau chief of Knight Ridder, assigned Strobel and Landay to investigate the validity of these claims. As they dig deeper, they encounter various sources and uncover multiple secrets that other newspapers had not been investigating. 

The film portrays the tension between the journalists and the prevailing narrative in the media. While many outlets were either complicit or passive in accepting the government’s claims, the Knight-Ridder team is determined to dig deeper. They conduct interviews, gather evidence, and piece together a story that contradicts the administration's assertions.

They discovered that the Bush administration was cherry-picking intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Rather than operating as an extension of the government, these journalists chose to continue their adversarial role as watchdogs, constantly asking whether or not what the government was telling them was true.

A pivotal moment is when General Colin Powell presented the administration's case for war to the United Nations, using dubious intelligence that Knight Ridder had already debunked.

The final scenes juxtapose the fictional narrative with real footage of the journalists and the aftermath of the Iraq War, emphasizing the tragic outcomes of the decisions made based on misinformation.

The film concludes with a stark reminder of the consequences of the war, highlighting the human cost and the long-term implications of the invasion. It also reflects on the role of the media in shaping public perception and the importance of journalistic integrity in holding the government accountable.

"When news is a profit center, access becomes currency." - Rob Reiner as John Walcott 

Knight Ridder was the only organization that looked past what The New York Times and The Washington Post would publish about the supposed WMDs, trying to shed light to the American public that they were being misled into the invasion of Iraq. 

For me, the movie lacked some emotion, as all the scenes felt quite fast. It felt like there was outrage and fear, but there was no passion in it. (Although, there is only so much you can do with the hour and a half they were given). It didn't allow the viewer to really feel the emotions of the soldiers, families, and country; rather, it focused on the stress of the journalists. 

And that is what the movie should be judged on. 

Shock and Awe focused on journalistic malpractice and acted as a civics lesson to all viewers. It gave audiences an inside look at how journalism actually works, including collecting sources, the use of information, and digging deep. It is an authentic work of not only the expectations of a journalist, but also their duty. 

EOTO #2 Reaction Post

Each person's presentation topic was uniquely tailored to them. From Malia's history of literary criticism to Noelia's history of fashion journalism, each topic covered different aspects of journalism history that I would not have otherwise known without these presentations. 

The Book Review 

I was most drawn to Malia's presentation because we are both English majors, so her topic was already appealing to me. In her presentation of the history of the book review, she discussed how they date back to 1896, featuring ten reviews in The New York Times. Critics like J. Donald Adams, a Harvard graduate and editor, played a pivotal role in shaping literary criticism, while John Leonard brought greater representation of women and people of color to the forefront of literary discussions. 

John Leonard 

John Leonard significantly shaped book reviews and literary criticism through his support of diverse voices, elevating minority works to critical acclaim. His insightful and engaging writing style, along with his commitment to cultural commentary, made him a vital figure in American literary discourse.

The evolution of the book review mirrors the roots of theatre criticism, which can be traced back to ancient Greece, where Aristotle's "Poetics" laid the groundwork for understanding dramatic techniques and storytelling. 

Theater Criticism 

The U.K. has also made significant contributions to theatre, with the birth of William Shakespeare in 1564 and the opening of Britain's first theatre in 1576 marking pivotal moments in theatrical history.

However, the 1700s brought a period of censorship that stifled artistic expression, a challenge that resonates in both theatre and journalism today. 

Artists and journalists continue to navigate the fine line of expression, often facing backlash and censorship.

Gossip Columns

Gossip columns have a rich history in American journalism, beginning with James Gordon Bennett, who established the first gossip column at the New York Herald in 1840. Walter Winchell later popularized this genre in the 1920s and 1930s, becoming a prominent figure known for blending news with sensationalism, thus shaping the landscape of tabloid journalism.

The 1930s and 1940s are often regarded as the golden age of gossip columns, where the genre reached new heights in popularity and influence. 

Walter Winchell's "On Broadway" 
Advertisement 

Winchell's column, "On Broadway," became the first official American gossip column, setting a precedent for future columnists and establishing a unique voice that captivated readers. His ability to mix celebrity news with social commentary made gossip columns a staple in American media.

As the decades progressed, the landscape of gossip journalism began to shift, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s. This era saw the rise of sensationalized reporting, characterized by false news and exaggerated headlines. This shift not only changed the way gossip was reported but also how it was consumed.

Fashion Journalism

Harper's Bazaar was published in 1867, earlier than the book review! As one of the first magazines dedicated to women's fashion and lifestyle, Harper's Bazaar played a crucial role in shaping public perceptions of style and elegance. Its influence extended beyond clothing, as it began to intertwine with interior design, which I thought was really unique!

This connection between fashion and interior design illustrates how both fields inform and inspire one another, creating a cohesive narrative of beauty and style that resonates through various aspects of life.

EOTO #2: Journalists Who Were Also Novelists

Joan Didion

Joan Didion (1934-2021) was an American essayist, journalist, novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is noted for her unique prose on the cultural and political environment of the 1960s. 

Born December 5th, 1934 in Sacramento, California to Frank and Eudene Didion, Didion was born a writer. She didn't recall staying in school consistently until about fourth grade. Despite her education being unconventional, as her father had to consistently relocate as he was an officer in the Army Air Corps, she remembers writing for as long as she could remember. 

In a 2006 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Didion was asked about her experience as a writer, to which she stated she saw herself as a writer when she was about five, simply because she started to write things down. 

With this, she taught herself to read and write another journalist turned novelist, Ernest Hemingway. 

"I liked Hemingway," Didion began. "The thing about Hemingway's sentences is that they are really loaded. Every comma and absence of a comma makes a huge difference, and it’s really been deliberated."

After graduation, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1956. During her senior year, she won a contest sponsored by Vogue called the "Prix de Paris," an annual essay contest that was held to help sponsor job opportunities with Vogue. Didion won the contest by submitting an essay about architect William Wilson Wurster, earning herself a job as a research assistant at Vogue.

For the first year, all she did was read old issues. Alongside this, she was also writing pieces for other magazines, but the goal in mind was to write a novel. 

Using the skills she learned during her seven years at Vogue, Didion published her first novel, Run, River, telling a story of a haunting marriage that falls apart. However, her first nonfiction novel, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered Didion's best work as an example of journalism, more specifically, "New Journalism." 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of columns that she had originally posted as an assignment for the magazine The Saturday Evening Post. In these essays, Didion narrates her "internal and external worlds at a singular time in modern American history." Set in the late 1960's, these twenty essays address the political and cultural environment of California in her life. 

"New Journalism" is best defined as a technique in reporting in the 1960s and 70s that broke away from the traditional, objective style of reporting and instead relied on literary techniques and a personalized approach. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, she uses her own pieces with a personal voice to explore complex, societal issues in California, moving beyond traditional journalistic objectivity and instead immersing the reader in the story's world. 

Along with Slouching Towards Bethlehem, some other novels of Didion highlight her journalistic abilities and "New Journalism" techniques, including Salvador, Miami, Political Fictions, Where I Was From, and The White Album. 

Of these books, I have only read The White Album. From a journalistic standpoint, this book was beautiful. She was involved in the political culture of California at such an interesting period, from Georgia O'Keefe to politicians in California. To me, some of these essays felt a bit redundant, as if you had to be there to understand, leaving them to feel almost irrelevant now. Nonetheless, they are still interesting reads and highlights of Didion's sharp, unique prose.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was the embodiment of art. 

Hemingway (1899-1961) was a short story writer, novelist, and journalist born in Oak Park, Illinois. Born to physician Clarence and well-known local musician Grace Hemingway, Hemingway was surrounded by intellect and art. 

His mother taught him the cello, and he credited these lessons with contributing to his writing style. His father taught him woodcraft, fishing, and hunting, contributing to his life-long passion for nature. 

In high school, he was involved in the arts (choir) and sports (boxing, football, track and field, and water polo). But the thing that people know him for is his writing, which started during his junior year of high school. 

He was an editor of the school newspaper, The Trapeze, and the school yearbook, The Tabula, jumpstarting his career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star at just eighteen years old. He started off writing obituaries, editing, and gathering crime news. 

During his journalism career, he was also a correspondent for the Toronto Star and a contributor to Esquire, Star Weekly, Look, True, and Colliers. 

T. Norman Williams, a writer who trained Hemingway at The Kansas City Star, wrote about Hemingway, stating "You see things. You know things. You read people like a book. And above all you can tell it." 

A snippet of "Kerensky, the 
Fighting Flea"

Two months after he started, he had his first feature story published. "Kerensky, the Fighting Flea" was a piece about Leo Kobreen, a successful amateur boxer, combined with Hemingway's love for boxing with humanity. 

In 1967, journalist, educator, and writer William White edited a collection of Ernest Hemingway's articles that he wrote between 1920 through 1956 entitled By Line: Ernest Hemingway.  From his eyewitness accounts of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) to his essays on hunting, this book showcases Hemingway's unique style, personality, and intelligence. 

Along with this, Hemingway went on to publish stories of his own, including In Our Time, The Sun Also Rises, and Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning novel The Old Man and the Sea. Common themes within his book include the effects of war, human endurance, and nature. 

Hemingway's economic and philosophical prose was one that not only influenced countless writers (like Didion), but readers and audiences around the globe. 

Willa Cather

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a novelist and journalist best known for her depictions of immigration in America in the early 20th century and her literary criticism for various publications. 

Cather was born in Winchester, Virginia before moving to Red Cloud, Nebraska at nine years old after a tuberculosis outbreak; this is where her journalism career would take off. 

She received her early education at home before attending grammar school and Red Cloud High School, where she gave "Superstition vs Investigation." 

She enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1890. There, she wrote an essay on Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher who was a leading writer of the Victorian era. This essay was published by her professor, Ebenezer Hunt, without her knowledge to the Nebraska State Journal. 

After this publication, it was hard not to see Cather's name somewhere in the Journal. She began to publish her own pieces, including "Shakespeare and Hamlet: The Real Significance of the Play", Peter, and "Shakespeare: A Freshman Theme." She became a regular contributor to the Journal and Lincoln Courier, and she became literary editor of student newspaper The Hesperian.

Before she began her career in Pittsburgh, Cather began editing the women-owned family magazine Home Monthly. In her short time at the magazine, before it sold, she produced journalistic and literary pieces. 

But this magazine being sold couldn't keep her from Pittsburgh. 

Working on edits, plays, and book reviews, Cather accepted a job at the Pittsburgh Leader. She also contributes to the local periodical The Library with her poetry and journalistic pieces. She had pieces included in Ladies' Home Journal, Index of Pittsburgh Life, Saturday Evening Post, New England Magazine, and Cosmopolitan.  

Between 1904 and 1905, Cather taught at Allegheny High School and continued to write by freelancing. After her teaching career, she moved to New York and joined the McClure's Magazine team as managing editor. 

The New York Times Archive

In 1912, Alexander's Bridge, Cather's first novel, is publicized as a series in McClure's under Alexander's Masquerade. Some of her other famous novels include One of Ours, My Ántonia, and The Song of Lark. 

Cather's work often puts readers in the story, allowing us to get a sense of not only the landscape but the feeling. 

Eric Arthur Blair | George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1946), who used the pen name George Orwell, was a novelist, critic, journalist, and essayist best known for his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and his totalitarianism critique Animal Farm. 

His family could not afford him to go to a public school, so he was sent to a Catholic convent school. In 1911, he gained a scholarship to St. Cyprian's school in East Sussex where he remained there for five years, publishing poems in Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. Blair then won a King's Scholarship to attend Eton College where he studied under Aldous Huxley. 

While in college, Blair helped produce college magazine The Election Times, which was also joined in publication with College Days and Bubble and Squeak. 

Blair's time in college was short as the family decided that he should join the Imperial Police in Burma. 

He later recounted how the Burmese did not want to be ruled by the British, and he felt ashamed of his role as a colonial officer; he wrote about his experience in his novel Burmese Days. 

Blair in Burma

After his leave to England, he decided not to return to Burma and quickly used this experience to shape his character as a writer. He spent a period of his life in London and Paris to immerse himself in the experience  Burmese people faced, living in cheap lodging houses. With what he witnessed in Burma and what he lived in London and Paris, he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London, where the experience was written as fiction. 

In 1937, Blair spent his time reporting on the Civil War in Spain with the Republican militia. After facing a life-threatening injury, Blair was forced to flee, writing of his experience in Homage to Catalonia. 

When he returned to England, he expressed his fears of fascism and abuse of power. He rejected military service during World War Two, working at the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) for three years. He headed the Indian service and focused on fighting propaganda and fascism. 

 

While at BBC, Blair introduced Voice, a literary program for his listeners in India. 

In 1941, he wrote articles for the American magazine Partisan Review. Other journalistic endeavors included contributing to The Observer, editing for the Horizon, and working as a war correspondent for The Manchester Evening News. 

In 1943, he became literary editor of the socialist magazine Tribune while his wife Eileen worked at the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information. At this point, Blair was heavily involved in journalism, writing countless newspaper articles, reviews, and criticisms. 

After resigning from BBC in 1943, he published Animal Farm a year later, a political story based on Joseph Stalin and the Russian Revolution.  This novel is regarded as one of his finest works as it tackled themes of dictatorship, equality- and lack thereof- and corruption. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four is known as one of his most famous novels, warning about Big Brother, honesty in government, and totalitarianism. Many of the phrases within this book left a notably deep impression on readers, politicians, and people around the globe, coining phrases that became common phrases in political rhetoric such as "doublethink" and "newspeak." 

Other novels by Orwell include Coming Up For Air, The Road to Wigan Pier, A Clergyman's Daughter, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. 

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Each of these famous journalists turned novelists made an impact in both fields, leveraging journalistic skills like observation and storytelling while also offering the freedom to explore deeper themes and utilize unique literary tools.