Page 153 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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TARBELL, IDA (1857-1944), literary journalist, adventurer, and lecturer, was
one of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century investigative reporters to
whom President Theodore Roosevelt gave the name "muckrakers."
A founder of investigative reporting, Tarbell is best known for her 19-part
series (1902-1904) in McClure's in which she laid out the monopolistic prac-
tices of Standard Oil. The series was later published as a book (The History of
the Standard Oil Company) that remains a model of hard-nosed, in-depth re-
porting that stakes out a moral position and then provides the documentation to
support that position.
The History of the Standard Oil Company also illustrated the "watchdog"
role of the press because the book incensed the nation, and that led the Supreme
Court later to break up the petroleum giant.
Never married herself, Tarbell nonetheless advocated that women stay home
and care for their families, but she also defended the notion of equal pay for
equal work. She herself attended college, worked 14 to 16 hours a day as a
newspaper managing editor, and went to Paris. She also wrote a series of articles
for newspapers and magazines such as McClure's and American Magazine
(which she also coedited and co-owned) on such diverse topics as mining safety,
child raising, and women inventors. She also wrote popular books on Napoleon
and eight books on Abraham Lincoln. All in a Day's Work, her autobiography,
was published in 1939.

SOURCES: Kathleen Brady, Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker, 1984; Ida Tarbell,
All in a Day's Work, 1939.
Larry L. Burriss

TELEVISION JOURNALISM. See David Brinkley; Walter Cronkite; Fred
Friendly; Ted Koppel; The McLaughlin Group; Bill Moyers; Edward R. Mur-