[Was objectivity really a historical norm? Not for these
pioneering labor journalists and advocates. ]
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MINNESOTA WOMEN LABOR JOURNALISTS UPLIFTED WORKING PEOPLE FOR DECADES
 
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Amie Stager
December 4, 2023
Workday Magazine
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_ Was objectivity really a historical norm? Not for these pioneering
labor journalists and advocates. _

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I have always struggled with the notion of objectivity in journalism.
I believe many news outlets, whether they skew left or right on the
political spectrum, often have another bias that has a major impact on
how readers understand their reality: the bias of favoring business
over labor.

Christopher Martin, author of _No Longer Newsworthy: How the
Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class_, writes about the
historic decline of labor journalism. The labor beat once had a large
presence in newspapers. As the labor movement of the mid-20th century
declined, the business model of traditional journalism became more
commercial — advertising became focused on demographics rather than
on circulation that attracts readers of all classes. Newspapers
abandoned poor and working-class issues in favor of addressing more
affluent and educated readers.

The labor press emerged to counter this trend. Workers and their
organizations published news and literature with various political
agendas. This provided a counternarrative to the corporate media
machine. Minnesota has a rich history of female labor journalists and
writers who were also advocates and activists. In the late 1800s, the
Minneapolis Tribune and St. Paul Globe ran labor columns edited by Eva
McDonald Valesh.

I stumbled upon Valesh’s biography the summer after I graduated
journalism school. To me, she seemed like Minnesota’s Nellie Bly,
having embedded herself in garment factories to report on working
conditions in her twenties. Her journalism career was followed by
public speaking and advocating for women’s labor organizing.

Eva McDonald Valesh, c.1885. Photograph by Rugg. Minnesota Historical
Society.

In _Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism_,
historian Elizabeth Faue examines how Valesh challenged gender norms
in both journalism and the labor movement. She worked alongside women
and girls and reported on the conditions and culture. Workers were
inspired to participate in strikes after her reporting.

Valesh became a lecturer for the Knights of Labor and worked for the
American Federation of Labor, organizing for different causes as her
allegiances shifted. She was invited to public debates, where she was
often the youngest, and argued for the importance of women’s
organizing.

Faue writes that Valesh’s interpretations of working-class suffering
showed an anti- immigration and anti-socialism bias in line with other
labor voices at the time. She integrated the conservative gender
ideology of some labor unions into her rhetoric. Many people
attributed the social malaise of the time to men suffering from
unemployment, and wanted women to organize so they could eventually
“emancipate themselves from the industrial field back to the
home,” leaving the role of breadwinner to men.

Although I differ from some of Valesh’s values and practices, I
agree with Faue’s point that without the influential cultural work
of reporters, investigators, and educators like Valesh, the labor
movement would not have been as strong, its messages drowned out by a
political landscape that was increasingly dominated by business
interests. Faue examines how Valesh’s class mobility may have
distanced her from working people, but her social ties with the upper
classes served her organizing work, and showed a woman who
transgressed the economic and gender norms of the time.

_Marvel Jackson Cooke, c. 1950s, Washington Press Club Foundation_.

I also revisited the work of Marvel Cooke, who was born in Mankato in
1903 and was the first African American woman to work for a
white-owned newspaper. She was a radical community and union organizer
who inspired Black activists and scholars like Dr. Angela Davis. She
worked in various industries and reported on the exploitation of Black
domestic workers in white homes, which led to regulation in the
industry. She was mentored by W.E.B. Du Bois, and helped found a
chapter of the Newspaper Guild in New York, one of the first labor
unions organized by journalists. She was later investigated by Senator
Joseph McCarthy for her affiliation with the Communist Party.

McCarthy also investigated Irene Paull, a radical political activist
from a Jewish immigrant family in Duluth. Paull edited The Timber
Worker during the timber worker strikes of 1937. The paper later
became the Congress of Industrial Organization’s official newspaper:
Midwest Labor. Paull supported the Farmer-Labor movement, the most
successful third-party movement in the U.S., uniting rural farmers
with urban laborers. Other women writers and organizers helped lead
this movement, including Susie Stageberg, the “mother” of the
Farmer-Labor party, who edited The Organized Farmer in Red Wing. Also
from Duluth was Sabrie Akin, who, in her twenties, founded the Labor
World newspaper, edited by Catherine Conlan today.

Irene Levine Paull testifying before the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), July 2, 1963. MNopedia.

A short walk from the University of Minnesota’s West Bank campus is
a building named after Meridel Le Seuer
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lives of working people in the Midwest for the Communist Party’s
Daily World. She wrote fiction and authored a manual on creative
writing, Worker Writers, for the Works Progress Administration.

Meridel Le Sueur, c.1940. Minnesota Historical Society.

I’m still learning about the writers I’ve mentioned here, many of
whom are left out of the usual lists of pioneering journalists and
women. Graduating with a journalism degree when there is so much
distrust — of the media, of our neighbors, and of our leaders —
I’ve often doubted what my gifts and perspectives as a young woman
can bring to my community and the field of journalism. Learning about
these writers and editors who were influenced by working people and
had an influence on the conditions of their times; who were
complicated, radical, and courageous, and fought against the
narratives upholding oppression and exploitation; shows me there is
room and need for my own voice.

_This article is a joint publication with Minnesota Women’s Press
[[link removed]]_ _for the December issue on
Changemakers._

_Amie Stager is the Associate Editor for Workday Magazine. 
She first joined the Labor Education Service in the fall of 2020 as
an intern for Workday Minnesota. Since then, she’s been covering
Minnesota’s labor movement with a focus on cultural and emotional
writing and investigative storytelling, helping to relaunch the online
publication as Workday Magazine._

_Workday Magazine holds the powerful to account while bringing the
perspectives of everyday workers, and the organizations that defend
their rights, to focus. We emphasize long-form investigative
journalism to unearth the concealed and buried. Our publication is
based in Minnesota and covers the greater Midwest, along with
international issues that affect workers, like climate change and U.S.
militarism._

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