SLCL’s Westfall Series Presents Brooke Kroeger on the History of Women in Journalism

St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Westfall Politics & History Series presents acclaimed journalist Brooke Kroeger for a discussion and signing of “Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism.”

The event will take place on Tuesday, May 23 at 7:00 p.m. at the Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Rd., St. Louis MO, 63123.

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from The Novel Neighbor.

Brooke Kroeger will be in conversation with KMOX News Anchor Debbie Monterrey.

NYU Journalism professor and former UN correspondent Brooke Kroeger presents an essential history of women in American journalism, showcasing exceptional careers from 1840 to the present.

“Undaunted” is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their way to do journalism’s most valued work. From Margaret Fuller’s improbable success to the highly paid reporters of the mid-nineteenth century to the breakthrough investigative triumphs of Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, and Ida B. Wells, Brooke Kroeger examines the lives of the best-remembered and long-forgotten woman journalists. She explores the careers of standout reporters who covered the major news stories and every conflict at home and abroad since before the Civil War, and she celebrates those exceptional careers up to the present, including those of Martha Gellhorn, Rachel Carson, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Cokie Roberts, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

As Kroeger chronicles the lives of journalists and newsroom leaders in every medium, a larger story develops: the nearly two-centuries-old struggle for women’s rights. Here as well is the collective fight for equity from the gentle stirrings of the late 1800s through the legal battles of the 1970s to the #MeToo movement and today’s racial and gender disparities.

“Undaunted” unveils the huge and singular impact women have had on a vital profession still dominated by men.

BROOKE KROEGER is a professor emerita at New York University, where she was the founding director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and taught from 1998 to 2021. She was UN correspondent for Newsday, deputy metropolitan editor at New York Newsday, and for more than a decade a correspondent, editor, and bureau and division chief for United Press International at home and abroad. She serves on the editorial board of “American Journalism: A Journal of Media History.”

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.