World War I
Mrs. Laura Birkhead and the French Medal of Honor
Back in June, I was poking around in newspapers.com* looking for examples of May Birkhead’s war reporting in World War I. In the process, I stumbled across a fascinating story about her mother, Laura Birkhead (1858-1938) Mrs. Birkhead was visiting her daughter in Paris when Germany declared war on France on August 3, 1914. Despite…
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A different path to being a war correspondent aka the woman on the spot
The Great War provided new opportunities for women journalists.* No women received official press accreditation with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during World War I, but a number of female journalists reached the front as “visiting correspondents.” Soon after the war began, the Saturday Evening Post, which had the largest circulation of any American magazine…
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American Journalists and the Great War
One of the challenges of writing history is deciding where the story starts. For me that not only means deciding where I begin telling the story, but how much of the backstory I need to understand. The short answer is, a lot. I am never comfortable making broad generalizations based on other people’s broad generalizations.…
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