Where Are Muckraking Journalists Today?
Ray Stannard Baker, crusading reporter for McClure’s. Photo courtesy of the Ray Stannard Baker Papers, Jones Library, Inc., Amherst, Massachusetts.Americans haven’t always hated journalists. Nor have American Presidents. At the turn of the last century, no magazines were more popular than the general interest monthlies—McClure’s, Everybody’s, Success—magazines that mixed fiction and verse with investigative journalism. And no public figure was more esteemed than Ray Stannard Baker, crusading reporter for McClure’s. Readers—hundreds of thousands of them—waited eagerly each month for the latest Baker exposé. And President Theodore Roosevelt waited, equally eagerly, for consultations with this man whom he considered both friend and adviser. Nothing pleased the President more than the opportunity to preview Baker’s articles—” and that not because of any good I can do you, but because I have learned to look to your articles for real help,” Roosevelt gushed. “You have impressed me with your
