muckrackers

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Graded Assignment
Muckrakers Under the Microscope
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. Which muckraker will you investigate? And how much information will you be able to provide?

(100 points)
1. Write a well-constructed article on one muckraker using the outline you created during your website research. Keep the following points in mind as you write your essay:
Include important biographical information about the individual’s life.
Give specific examples of articles and books that were written. What businesses or government offices were targeted in the exposés?
What reforms or changes took place as a result of the individual’s writings?
Answer:

Lincoln Steffens

Lincoln Steffens was most of the important muckrakers of his time. But what are muckrakers? They were investigative journalists who, through writing, exposed corruption. Corruption of businesses, governments and many more.
Lincoln Steffens was born on april 6, 1866 in San Francisco, California. Growing up in a wealthy family, he studied in France and Germany, graduating from the “University Of California”. Steffens began his career as a journalist at the New York Evening Post. He later became an editor of McClure's magazine. This magazine was credited for having started the tradition of muckraking journalism. There he became part of a celebrated muckraking trio with Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker. He specialized in investigating government and political corruption. His most famous works published in McClure's magazine were “The Shame Of The Cities” and “The Struggle For Self-Government”.
“The Shame Of The Cities” is a book composed of many articles, written in 1904. Those articles report on the workings of corrupt “political machines” in several major U.S. cities.