Sympathy and the American newspaper woman -- Representing institutions: asylums and prisons in American periodicals -- Scenes of sympathy in Margaret Fuller's New-York Tribune reportage -- Entering unceremoniously: Fanny Fern, sympathy, and tales of confinement -- Making a spectacle of herself: Nellie Bly, stunt reporting, and marketed sympathy -- Sympathy and sensation: Elizabeth Jordan, Lizzie Borden, and the female reporter in the late nineteenth-century -- Afterword.