THE MUCKRAKER Ida Tarbell

Before Ida Tarbell took on John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, the idea of a journalist bringing down the largest monopoly in the US would have been laughable. But her relentless investigation, passion for the truth, and innovative code of journalistic ethics wouldn’t just change the country’s businesses — it would revolutionize American journalism forever. Meet the original “Muckraker.”

Our guest is Stephanie Gorton, author of Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell and the Magazine That Rewrote America.

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.

You can read Ida Tarbell’s investigative series The History of the Standard Oil Company online at Project Gutenberg.

Ida Tarbell seated at a desk — Ida Tarbell in 1894, after returning from Paris and joining the staff of McClure’s
courtesy of Pelletier Library, Allegheny College

McClure's Magazine cover — Cover of McClure’s Magazine, 103
public domain

“The Crusaders: Marching Embattled ‘Gainst the Saracens of Graft” by C. Hassman, published in Puck in February 1906, featuring S. S. McClure (foreground, with crossbow), Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens (on horse, at right), and fellow magazinists
Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

Stephanie Gorton has written for NewYorker.com, Smithsonian.com, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Toast, The Millions, and other publications. Previously, she held editorial roles at Canongate Books, The Overlook Press, and Open Road. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh and Goucher College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her family. Citizen Reporters is her first book; she is currently working on a new book about the legalization of birth control.

THE MUCKRAKER Ida Tarbell

Music featured in this episode included:

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