Bly was so famous in her time that dolls were made of her, songs were written about her, a race horse was named for her, and her image appeared everywhere from posters to soap ads to cartoons. Originally named Elizabeth Cochrane, her editor gave her the pen name Nellie Bly for her first controversial story. She was theatrical and adventurous, and pulled many famous stunts such as getting herself locked up in an insane asylum and travelling around the world in 72 days.
Bly got her first job, at the Pittsburgh Dispatch, because she wrote an anonymous letter to the editor. It protested an article which said that unmarried women should not worry about finding jobs, and should look for husbands instead. Her style and passion impressed the editor, who put out an ad in the paper saying he wanted to hire the writer of that letter, so Bly introduced herself and got the job.
Bly was an expert at going undercover and getting a good story. While in the insane asylum, she and the other women were treated poorly, and she found that many women shouldn't have been there at all. After 10 days, her editor got her out and she wrote a long article detailing her experience there and exposing the harshness and uncleanliness of the place. It caused an uproar and launched an investigation. She also covered corrupt politicians, prison conditions, and men who sold women for sex. In one famous story, Bly posed as a poor woman in order to see what went on in sweatshops. Her negative story caused those shops to threaten to cancel their advertising, so her editor assigned her to less controversial stories. Bly expressed her dissatisfaction with his decision by taking a six-month vacation in Mexico, where she wrote letters to the Dispatch about poverty and political corruption there. The Mexican government was so angry that they ordered her out of the country, and her editor offered her a raise when she returned. She refused.
She then went to work for the New York World, where she came up with the idea of trying to beat the travel time of the fictional Phineas Fogg, from Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. She asked her publisher to fund it, and she took off on November 14, 1889. No special arrangements were made, and Bly had to rely on catching the right boats and trains, because they wouldn't wait for her. She wrote about her travels, often criticizing each country she went through. Her stories were wildly popular, and many people followed her journey closely on the map that was published every day showing where she was. She arrived home 72 days later, a monkey on her shoulder.
Bly's journalism, although it was intended to get people to read the paper, also resulted in social change. By telling the public what it was really like in prison or as a sweatshop worker, and exposing the injustices, the readers would get angry and call for investigations and changes in the law and business practices. Instead of criticizing things from the outside, she actually discovered what certain places were like, and travelled around the world so that she could get the truth and report it from her persepctive on the inside.
Bly's trip around the world was unusual because it was the first of its kind, and because she was a woman. At that time, American women often didn't travel to other countries. Nowadays, many women journalists make a living writing about other countries, or even writing travel guides for tourists. The next time you go somewhere, whether it's to visit your relatives in another state or just somewhere on the other side of your town, write about it. How is where you go different from your neighborhood? How do you get there? By plane, car, bus, or train? What did you see on the way there? Do the buildings look different? Is the landscape different? Read about other countries, and try to imagine what Bly could have seen in her travels.