Nellie Bly and the curious practice of stunt reporting

After my most recent journalism project, I have made a discovery:
I want to be a stunt reporter.

And just in case you didn't know or aren't suitably impressed by that statement, I'll explain what that means.
The woman who I researched in order to complete my project was a woman who went by the pseudonym Nellie Bly. She was the pioneer of women's stunt reporting, and did a bunch of ridiculous stunts for her job, such as faking insanity in order to be committed to an asylum, and therefore being able to observe the treatment of its inhabitants from the inside. She also posed as a prostitute in remission, a shopgirl, shoplifters, underage prey for prostitute recruiters...she was a woman of tenacity and courage, as well as an undeniable draw to the sensationalistic and dramatic.
But hey, that's why people read her stuff. She entertained them, and she was honest about her experiences and observations: a sort of combined hard news/soft news story that had both the news and opinion, intermingled so much that it would be difficult to tell where one element started and the other ended. But then, modern news can be kind of like that anyway.

All the same, it's unlikely that I'll ever do this, for several reasons: first, there is far less of a draw for stunt reporting now. And lawsuits have a lot more prevalence. Women are also far easier to find in terrifying circumstances, and there's also the safety aspect.

And of course, there's the fact that journalism isn't the profession it once was. In fact, it isn't the profession it was ten minutes ago. Always, always changing.


NOTE: This was a draft from last year, approximately this time. It still stands.