Online, Outline, Deadline!

Muckrakers were investigative journalists who exposed corruption in business or government, or examined serious societal issues. Several of the most well-known muckrakers worked for McClure’s Magazine, where they wrote exposés on large companies, meat slaughtering houses, and city governments. These prominent and influential reporters included Ida M. Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and Ray Stannard Baker.

Now suppose that you, too, are an investigative journalist. Instead of choosing a business or government, you have been asked to write a piece on one of the muckrakers. Before you can actually flesh out your article you will have to submit an outline for editorial approval. Which muckraker will you investigate? And how much information will you be able to provide?

1. Write a well-constructed outline on one muckraker using the information you collected during your website research. Keep the following points in mind as you write your outline:

1. Include important biographical information about the individual’s life.
2. Give specific examples of articles and books that were written by the individual. What businesses or government offices were targeted in the exposés?
3. What reforms or changes took place as a result of the individual’s writings?

Answer:

Type your answer here.

Use the following websites for your information:

https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/ida-tarbel…

https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/rockefeller.htm…

Ida M. Tarbell

One of the most amazing muckrakers was a woman named Ida M. Tarbell. Start with the quick facts at the Discover the Women of the Hall page on National Women’s Hall of Fame website at http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=156 to find out Tarbell’s date of birth, date of death, and the work she did before her groundbreaking report on Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller.

What did Ida Tarbell determine about practices at Standard Oil? And what was Ida Tarbell’s impact on journalism as a whole? PBS’s website has a page at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/p_tarbell.html with this information that you can in your outline.