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Alexis Sobel Fitts
The tradition of immersive reporting goes back to the rise of modern American journalism in the 19th century, and the role of the journalist within the genre--particularly when covering the poor--has always been a matter of some debate. Nellie Bly stunned readers when she feigned mental illness to expose conditions in mental institutions, embedding herself in Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum to write Ten Days in a Mad-House, the famous New York World series that eventually became a book. It was a feat that changed journalism at the time, but the ethics of her intimate immersion would undoubtedly be scrutinized differently today. How the Other Half Lives, the 1890 book by journalist and social reformer Jacob Riis that documented poverty on New York's Lower East Side, is widely hailed as groundbreaking for Riis' intimacy with his subjects. In the decades following its publication, the city reformed tenement housing and sweatshops. Here, Fitts and Pring examine whether and when a reporter can intervene in a story.
