Happy 2024 Birthday to Legendary Investigative Journalist Ida Tarbell

by Robert Wilkinson

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of the pioneering journalists of the 20th century, the fearless Ida Tarbell!

From Wikipedia,

Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is thought to have pioneered investigative journalism. She is best known for her 1904 book, "The History of the Standard Oil Company," which was listed as No. 5 in a 1999 list by New York University of the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism. It was first serialized in McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1904. She depicted John D. Rockefeller as crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade. She wrote many other notable magazine series and biographies, including several works on President Abraham Lincoln, revealing his early life.

Her investigative journalism was serialized from 1902 to 1904 in McClure's Magazine; her first article on Standard Oil was published with pieces by Lincoln Steffens and Ray Stannard Baker. Together these articles ushered in the era of muckraking journalism. The series was later published as a book in 1904, The History of the Standard Oil Company.

Tarbell's biggest obstacle, however, was neither her gender nor Rockefeller's opposition. Rather, her biggest obstacle was the craft of journalism as practiced at the turn of the twentieth century. She investigated Standard Oil and Rockefeller by using documents—hundreds of thousands of pages scattered throughout the nation—and then amplified her findings through interviews with the corporation's executives and competitors, government regulators, and academic experts past and present. In other words, she proposed to practice what today is considered investigative reporting, which did not exist in 1900. Indeed, she invented a new form of journalism.

And then, in an inspirational tale for journalists, Ida Tarbell went to work. Her History of the Standard Oil Company spotlighted Rockefeller's practices and mobilized the public. Readers nationwide awaited each chapter of the story, serialized in 19 installments by McClure's between 1902 and 1904.

Her stories on Standard Oil began in the November 1902 issue of McClure's and lasted for nineteen issues. She was meticulous in detailing Rockefeller's early interest in oil and how the industry began. After the series was over, she wrote a profile of Rockefeller, perhaps the first CEO profile ever, though she never met or even talked to Rockefeller.

Tarbell developed investigative reporting techniques, digging into public documents across the country. Separately, these documents provided individual instances of Standard Oil's strong-arm tactics against rivals, railroad companies and others that got in its way. Organized by Tarbell into a cogent history, they became a damning portrayal of big business. A subhead on the cover of Weinberg's book encapsulates it this way: "How a female investigative journalist brought down the world's greatest tycoon and broke up the Standard Oil monopoly."

So thanks to you, Ms. Ida Tarbell! You boldly went where no woman had gone before, and showed the world how to speak truth to power. Bravo!

For more on this remarkable woman, here’s the Wikipedia link to Ida Tarbell

© Copyright 2024 Robert Wilkinson

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