Girl Reporters: The Newswomen of Old Shanghai
The ranks of the foreign journalists of Old Shanghai were mostly filled by hard-bitten men, but by the 1920s, some of the city’s best and most interesting correspondents were women, or as they were known then, “girl reporters”.
Born at the turn of the 20th century into a changing world, these women were the first generation of with the right to vote, access to birth control, and a college education. The girl reporters of Shanghai also had an extraordinary sense of adventure, traveling across the oceans, sans chaperone, to a land they’d never seen. They often came with neither funds nor jobs, but they were plucky, ambitious, and damn fine journalists.
EDNA LEE BOOKER
China Press, International News Service
When she arrived in 1922, Edna Lee Booker had a job lined up with the McTyiere School. She’d been bitten by the news bug at summer jobs at the Los Angeles Herald and San Francisco Call Bulletin, and quickly parlayed that into a job as a girl reporter for the American-owned China Press newspaper.
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