{"id":714,"date":"2026-09-09T10:21:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessrelocationdigest.com\/?p=714"},"modified":"2026-09-09T10:21:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:21:52","slug":"opinion-gloria-steinem-undercover-journalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessrelocationdigest.com\/?p=714","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Gloria Steinem, undercover journalist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

She was a trailblazing crusader for feminism, activism and equality.<\/p>\n

But what many of the obituaries, tributes and analyses of Gloria Steinem\u2019s wonderful life have missed is that she was one of the finest practitioners of a dying art: \u201cparticipatory journalism,\u201d or as it\u2019s sometimes called, \u201cimmersion journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more How the Upper West Side challenges even the most prepared candidates<\/a><\/p>\n

George Plimpton coined the term \u201cparticipatory journalism\u201d in 1966 when he wrote \u201cPaper Lion\u201d about his experience as a third-string quarterback in the NFL for the Detroit Lions \u2013 but three years before that, a young female journalist put on a skimpy uniform and went undercover as a \u201cBunny\u201d at the Playboy Club in Manhattan to chronicle the poor conditions women working there endured.<\/p>\n

\u201c,\u201d which Steinem wrote for Show magazine in 1963, exposed the sexist and misogynistic world inside Hugh Hefner\u2019s new men\u2019s club, where waitresses wore tails and the male patrons who ordered food and drinks from them felt it was their right to pull on them:<\/p>\n

A girl with jet black hair, chalky makeup and a green costume stopped at the door. \u201cMy tail droops,\u2019 she said, pushing it into position with one finger, \u201cthose damn customers always yank on it.\u201d The wardrobe mistress handed her a safety pin. \u201cYou better get a cleaner tail, too, baby. You get demerits running around with a scruffy tail like that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Probably the earliest recorded example of this immersive journalism happened in 1961, when John Howard Griffin wrote the book \u201cBlack Like Me.\u201d Griffin, a white journalist, blackened his skin and traveled through the racist South, describing how he was treated and what it was like to be a black man in that racist region.<\/p>\n

The legendary Hunter Thompson practiced an even more radical version of this style of journalism. He rode with the outlaw motorcycle gang the Hell\u2019s Angels for a year to write the book \u201cHell\u2019s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga\u201d in 1966. He then covered the 1972 presidential campaign in \u201cFear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.\u201d His style of \u201cgonzo journalism\u201d allowed him to both make himself the center of the story and blend in social criticism \u2013 normally a big \u201cno-no\u201d in typical objective journalism.<\/p>\n

When I was the editor of a weekly community newspaper in Manhattan during the late 1980s, I employed \u201cparticipatory journalism\u201d in a number of freelance assignments I doled out.<\/p>\n

In one story, which received national headlines, I encouraged our reporter not to bathe or shave for a week and then put on some ragged clothes and travel with a beat-up duffel bag to the Hamptons. I wanted to see how a wealthy resort town would react to an apparently homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk in their chicest commercial strip.<\/p>\n

The assignment called for him to park himself in front of a jewelry shop on Main Street in Southampton and to lie in front of the store, posing as a sleeping homeless person. I had a freelance photographer perched across the street ready to record any interaction with the faux homeless resident.<\/p>\n

Within an hour, the Southampton police chief showed up and aggressively asked the reporter what he was doing. \u201cI\u2019m homeless, so I\u2019m going to sleep here on this street,\u201d he replied. \u201cIt\u2019s my constitutional right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Rahm Emanuel is still talking about his meeting with Zohran Mamdani<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNot in my town you\u2019re not. I\u2019m the law,\u201d said the sheriff. \u201cIf you\u2019re not out of town by sundown, I\u2019m going to have you arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our photographer got some great shots of the menacing-looking Sheriff hovering over our frail \u201chomeless\u201d reporter. A few days later, the New York Post picked up our story under the headline: \u201cHomeless in the Hamptons.\u201d It sparked a national debate about how different municipalities deal with homelessness on their streets.<\/p>\n

I was so emboldened by this journalistic coup that I assigned a few more \u201cparticipatory journalism\u201d assignments: one female reporter became a receptionist at an upper East Side brothel. \u201cThe Call Girl\u2019s Call Girl,\u201d was the headline of her first-person piece describing in detail what happens overnight at a high-end illegal prostitution business.<\/p>\n

Another story I assigned involved one of our writers joining a \u201cSexaholics Anonymous\u201d group and reporting about what those group conversations were like (of course, without divulging any identities or info that could be traceable).<\/p>\n

Participatory journalism\u2019s heyday was during the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s when literary journalists like Norman Mailer, Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe used techniques from fiction to set scenes and use interior monologue to lure readers into a different journalistic experience. Plimpton, Steinem and other intrepid journalists benefited from this era of experimental journalism.<\/p>\n

In recent decades, unfortunately, the use of participatory journalism has waned. I miss this innovative technique that allowed a 28-year-old unknown young woman with a passion for feminism and social justice to break through to a worldwide audience and expose the inner workings of an exploitative and sexist workplace.<\/p>\n

We need more young Gloria Steinems today to embed themselves in places that rarely come into view for ordinary Americans. There is so much to expose, and by going undercover, reporters can really get the \u201cfly on the wall\u201d story of how people truly behave in private settings.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if Natalie Harp or Karoline Leavitt or Susie Wiles was really an undercover journalist who was actually taking detailed notes to expose the seamy underbelly of the Trump administration?<\/p>\n

Read more Menin conspicuously absent from Mamdani\u2019s 9\/11 health announcement<\/a><\/p>\n

An editor can dream.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before becoming an international icon, the celebrated feminist thinker started her career practicing a unique form of journalism that\u2019s become a lost art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nOpinion: Gloria Steinem, undercover journalist - Business Relocation Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/businessrelocationdigest.com\/?p=714\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Opinion: Gloria Steinem, undercover journalist - 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