Literacy had risen dramatically by the turn of the last century and in that last epoch before radio and motion pictures, the printed word was the prevailing medium. Magazines came to the fore in a nation too large for any local newspaper to gain national status. Chief among them was McClure’s, the focus of Citizen Reporters. Stephanie Groton ushers the reader into Gilded Age America and the blend of entertainment and muckraking, moral purpose and pursuit of readers that characterized McClure’s. The magazine’s strength was the talent and imagination of its staff, especially writer Ida Tarbell and founder-editor S.S. McClure.
