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Philatelic News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 20, 2002
Stamp Release #02-056
U.S. POSTAL SERVICE PAYS TRIBUTE TO FOUR OUTSTANDING WOMEN IN JOURNALISM
Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne, and Ida M. Tarbell to be honored on U.S. postage stamps
Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne, and Ida M. Tarbell to be honored on U.S. postage stamps
WASHINGTON - Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne, and Ida M. Tarbell will be honored next month with the issuance of the Women in Journalism commemorative postage stamps on Sept. 14 in Fort Worth, Texas.
The ceremony will be held at the Society of Professional Journalists National Convention, Renaissance Worthington Hotel, 200 Main Street, Fort Worth, Texas. The 37-cent Women in Journalism stamps will be available at Fort Worth post offices starting Sept. 14. They will be available at post offices across the country beginning the following day.
"The Postal Service has a proud tradition of honoring those special people who have had a significant influence on American history, art and culture," said Francia G. Smith, Vice President and Consumer Advocate for the Postal Service, who will be the dedicating official for the event.
Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne, and Ida M. Tarbell made their contributions to journalism at different times, but they were all trailblazers in a field dominated by men. Avoiding the limitations of working on women's or society pages, they entered the fields of investigative journalism, war correspondence, and political reporting. Through their work they won awards and fame and opened doors for future women journalists.
Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochrans Mills, Pa. In 1885, angered by a column in The Pittsburg Dispatch, she sent an anonymous letter to the editor. Impressed with her letter, the editor ran an ad seeking the writer's identity.
After meeting Cochran, he hired her to write an article about "a woman's place in the world." She soon became a permanent member of the staff and began to use the pen name Nellie Bly, taken from the popular Stephen Foster song "Nelly Bly."
In 1887, Bly moved to New York City and was hired by "The World" a newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer. For her first assignment she feigned insanity and gained admittance to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island (now Roosevelt Island). Bly's account of her experience exposed the poor treatment of patients in the asylum.
Given the task of traveling around the world in fewer than 80 days, Bly achieved widespread fame in 1889 as she raced around the world to beat the record set by Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg. She began her voyage on November 14, 1889, setting sail from New Jersey for England. Before her journey ended 72 days later, Bly had traveled by train, rickshaw, and burro to achieve her goal.
Nellie Bly was one of the first female stunt reporters who participated in dangerous or sensational activities in order to capture readers' attention. Her success, as well as the social issues her stories highlighted, helped open the profession to coming generations of women journalists who wanted to write hard news rather than be relegated to light features and society columns.
Marguerite Higgins (1920-1966) covered World War II, Korea, and Vietnam and in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war correspondents. In 1951, she was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
Eager to become a war correspondent, Higgins persuaded the management of the "New York Herald Tribune" to send her to Europe in 1944. After being stationed in London and Paris, she was reassigned to Germany in March 1945. There she witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945 and received an Army campaign ribbon for her assistance during the SS guards' surrender. She later covered the Nuremberg war trials and the Soviet Union's blockade of Berlin.
In 1950, Higgins was named chief of the "Tribune's" Tokyo bureau. Shortly after her arrival in Japan war broke out in Korea. One of the first reporters on the spot, she was quickly ordered out of the country by a U.S. military commander who argued that women did not belong at the front. An appeal was made to General Douglas MacArthur, who reversed the orders, a major breakthrough for all female war correspondents. As a result of her reporting from Korea, Higgins won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, sharing the award with five male war correspondents.
Higgins continued to cover foreign affairs throughout the rest of her life, interviewing world leaders such as Francisco Franco, Nikita Khrushchev, and Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1955 she established and was chief of the "Tribune's" Moscow bureau. In 1963 she joined Newsday and was assigned to cover Vietnam. While on assignment in late 1965, Higgins contracted a tropical disease that led to her death on January 3, 1966.
Award-winning journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911-1991), known as the first lady of the black press, combined advocacy with journalism as she reported on the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972, she became the first female African-American commentator employed by a national network.
Born in Chicago, Ill., Payne began her journalism career rather unexpectedly while working as a hostess at an Army Special Services club in Japan, a position she had taken in 1948. She allowed a visiting reporter from the "Chicago Defender" to read her journal, which detailed her own experiences as well as those of African-American soldiers. Impressed, the reporter took the journal back to Chicago and soon Payne's observations were being used by the "Defender," an African-American newspaper with a national readership, as the basis for front-page stories.
In the early 1950s, Payne moved back to Chicago to work full-time for the Defender. After working there for two years she took over the paper's one-person bureau in Washington, D.C. During Payne's career, she covered several key events in the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott and desegregation at the University of Alabama in 1956, as well as the 1963 March on Washington.
Payne earned a reputation as an aggressive journalist who asked tough questions. She once asked President Eisenhower when he planned to ban segregation in interstate travel. The President's angry response that he refused to support special interests made headlines and helped push civil rights issues to the forefront of national debate.
The work of Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944) has stood the test of time. In 1999, New York University's journalism department ranked her "History of the Standard Oil Company" fifth on its list of the top one hundred works of 20th-century American journalism. On Oct. 7, 2000, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Tarbell was born in Erie County, Pa. After graduating from Allegheny College in 1880 (the only woman in her class) Tarbell moved to Ohio and taught school for two years. In 1882, she moved back to Pennsylvania and a year later took a position with The Chautauquan, a monthly magazine.
In 1891, Tarbell moved to Paris and supported herself by contributing articles to American newspapers and magazines. In 1894, she returned to the United States to work for McClure's Magazine. Her most famous project was an exhaustive investigation of the Standard Oil Company and the methods that John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had used to consolidate his hold on the oil industry. Tarbell's detailed series of articles published from 1902 to 1904 helped bring about legal actions that resulted in the breakup of Standard Oil several years later.
Later in her career, Tarbell traveled as a lecturer and wrote freelance articles, including a report on the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and an interview with Benito Mussolini in the mid-1920s.
For each of these stamps, designer Fred Otnes of West Redding, Ct., created a collage featuring a black-and-white photograph combined with memorabilia such as publication nameplates and story headlines. The four designs are repeated five times each on the stamp pane.
The collage on the Nellie Bly stamp features a circa 1890 black-and-white photograph of Bly. To the left of the photograph is a portion of the nameplate of The World from the January 20, 1890, edition of the paper.
The collage on the Marguerite Higgins stamp features a 1950 black-and-white photograph of Higgins taken by Life photographer Carl Mydans. The picture appeared in Higgins' 1951 book "War in Korea" and was captioned "Miss Higgins after landing at Suwon." The word "Korea" taken from the map on the inside of the back cover of "War in Korea", appears to the right of the photograph. To the left is the New York Herald Tribune nameplate from the Sept. 17, 1950, edition of the paper.
The collage on the Ethel L. Payne stamp features a black-and white photograph of Payne. To the left of the photograph is the nameplate of the Chicago Defender from the April 3, 1954, edition. To the right of Payne's photograph is a headline for her article about the Alabama bus boycott that was published in the Feb. 18, 1956, edition of the Chicago Defender.
The collage on the Ida M. Tarbell stamp features a black-and-white photograph of Tarbell. To the right of the photograph is a portion of the headline "The History of the Standard Oil Company," as well as a portion of the McClures Magazine header, both from page 3 of the magazine's Nov. 1902 issue.
To see the Women in Journalism stamps, visit the Postal Service Web site at www.usps.com and locate the online version of this press release by clicking on "News and Events" then "Philatelic News."
Current U.S. stamps, as well as a free comprehensive catalog, are available toll free by calling 1 800 STAMP-24. In addition, a selection of stamps and other philatelic items are available in the Postal Store at www.usps.com.
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Technical Details
Issue: Women in Journalism
Item Number: 453200
Denomination & Type of Issue: 37-cent Commemorative
Format: Pane of 20 with header (4 designs)
Series: N/A
Issue Date & City: September 14, 2002, Fort Worth, TX 76161
Designer: Fred Otnes, West Redding, CT
Art Director: Howard E. Paine, Delaplane, VA
Typographer: John Boyd, New York, NY
Artist: Fred Otnes, West Redding, CT
Modeler: Donald H. Woo
Manufacturing Process: Gravure
Printer: Sennett Security Products (SSP)
Printed at: American Packaging Corporation, Columbus, WI
Press Type: Rotomec, 3000
Engraver: Armotek Industries
Stamps per Pane: 20
Print Quantity: 61 million stamps
Paper Type: Pre-phosphored, Type I
Gum Type: Pressure Sensitive
Processed at: Unique Binders, Fredericksburg, VA
Colors: Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, Black, Beige
Stamp Orientation: Horizontal
Image Area (w x h): 1.41 x 1.075 in./35.81 x 27.31 mm
Overall Size (w x h): 1.56 x 1.225 in./39.62 x 31.12 mm
Pane Size (w x h): 7.458 x 7.625 in./189.43x 193.68 mm
Plate Size: 120 stamps per revolution
Plate Numbers: "S" followed by five (5) single digits
Marginal Markings: " © 2001 USPS" " Price " Plate Numbers in all four corners " Plate Position Diagram " Header and text
Catalog Item Number(s): 453240 Pane of 20 w/plate no. & selvage - $7.40
453230 Block of 10 - $3.70
453220 Block of 4 - $1.48
453263 First day cover (set of 4) - $3.00
453293 Pane of 20 & FDC (set of 4) - $10.40
How to Order the First Day of Issue Postmark
Customers have 30 days to obtain the first day of issue postmark by mail. They may purchase new stamps at their local Post Office, by telephone at 1 800-STAMP-24, and at the Postal Store Web site at www.usps.com. They should affix the stamps to envelopes of their choice, address the envelopes (to themselves or others), and place them in a larger envelope addressed to: WOMEN IN JOURNALISM COMMEMORATIVE STAMPS, POSTMASTER, DOWNTOWN STATION, 251 WEST LANCASTER AVE., FORT WORTH TX 76102-9998.
After applying the first day of issue postmark, the Postal Service will return the envelopes through the mail. There is no charge for the postmark. All orders must be postmarked by October 15, 2002.
Stamp Fulfillment Services (SFS) also offers first day covers for new stamp issues and Postal Service stationery items postmarked with the official first day of issue cancellation. Each item has an individual catalog number and is offered in the quarterly USA Philatelic catalog. Customers may request a free catalog by telephoning 1 800-STAMP-24 or writing to: INFORMATION FULFILLMENT, DEPT 6270, US POSTAL SERVICE, PO BOX 219014, KANSAS CITY, MO 64121-9014. First day covers remain on sale at least one year after the stamp's issuance.
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Since 1775, the U.S. Postal Service has connected friends, families, neighbors and businesses by mail. It is an independent federal agency that visits 137 million homes and businesses every day and is the only service provider to deliver to every address in the nation. The Postal Service receives no taxpayer dollars for routine operations, but derives its operating revenues solely from the sale of postage, products and services. With annual revenues of more than $65 billion, it is the world's leading provider of postal services, offering some of the most affordable postage rates in the world. The Postal Service delivers more than 46 percent of the world's mail volume-some 207 billion letters, advertisements, periodicals and packages a year-and serves 7 million customers each day at its 40,000 retail locations nationwide.
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