MTEL Communication and Literacy Skills (01) Practice Test

Communication and Literacy Skills (01) Practice Test: ReadingRead the passage below, written in the style of a college journalism textbook.Then answer the five questions that follow.Nellie Bly1 When Nellie Bly (1867–1922) landedher first job as a reporter for the PittsburghDispatch in 1885, investigative journalismwas not widely practiced. But over the nextthirty-five years, Bly's reportorial ingenuity,allied with her focus on issues of socialjustice, brought investigative reporting to newprominence and helped transform journalismin the United States.2 As a reporter for the Dispatch, Bly quicklydemonstrated the resourcefulness that wouldlater make her famous. Entering the city'smost impoverished areas, she conductedinterviews with working women and otherresidents that provided the basis for a seriesof stories on underreported topics such aspoverty, divorce, and factory work. Bly'sreputation was enhanced by an 1886–1887 tripto Mexico, where she investigated politicalcorruption and the problems of the nation'spoor. But it was not until she went to workfor Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that shebegan filing the stories that would make her ahousehold name.3 Pulitzer, who had recently moved to NewYork from St. Louis, was a major figure inU.S. journalism. Although mainly interestedin selling newspapers, he understood how thepower of the press could be employed tocreate support for social reform. And the latenineteenth century was a time when muchneeded to be reformed. This was especially soin large urban centers such as New York City,where poorly paid working people—many ofthem recent immigrants from southern andeastern Europe—often lived in filthy, crowdedtenements without any of the social servicesavailable today. As publisher of the World,Pulitzer promised to use his newspaper to"expose all fraud and sham, fight all publicevils and abuses, and do battle for the people."4 Bly would help him carry out that promisethrough her pioneering undercover work forthe World. Her first assignment, an exposé ofthe notorious New York City Lunatic Asylumon Blackwell's Island, provides a particularlygood example. Feigning mental illness, Blyhad herself committed for ten days in order toexperience the conditions from an inmate'spoint of view. The resulting story caused asensation that, in addition to selling countlessnewspapers, prompted urgently neededchanges in the treatment of patients.5 Bly was soon filing a new story everyweek as a crusading "stunt" reporter, ajournalistic approach that was a forerunner ofthe investigative reporting of a later period.On one occasion, she posed as a maid for astory on employment agencies that tookadvantage of poor, uneducated women. Onanother occasion, she posed as an unwedmother for a story on trafficking in newbornbabies that revealed they could be purchasedfrom brokers for as little as ten dollars withoutany questions being asked. She also wentundercover to investigate bribery in the NewYork State Legislature, where she exposed theillegal operations of political lobbyists, at leastone of whom was forced to leave the state.6 Not all of Bly's stories advanced thecrusade against injustice and corruption. Inaddition, she did her share of lightweightreporting. Indeed, the story for which she isbest known was a pure publicity stunt. InNovember 1889 she traveled around the worldin an attempt to beat the fictional record set inJules Verne's novel Around the World inEighty Days; she made it in seventy-two—tothe accompaniment of two and a half monthsof hyperbolic coverage in Pulitzer's paper.Nevertheless, championing the cause of poor13