In Search of Jenkins

Abstract

In the 1860s to the 1880s, the term “Jenkins,” borrowed from a British expression for a windy and obsequious society reporter, was widely used in the U.S. as a derisive term for journalists whose prose was over-rich and whose prying was viewed as excessive. Critics of the Jenkins tribe ran the gamut from Mark Twain to the august George William Curtis, editor of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. A study of the use of the “Jenkins” label offers firm clues for evaluating how readers and reporters engaged with their newspapers. It reveals specific points of rivalry between reporters; it reflects a general public anxiety that was sometimes misplaced or even deliberately exaggerated over the evolving conventions of reportorial work; and it suggests that readers bad a clear understanding about relationships between style and topic in journalistic prose, violations of which opened the offender to criticism.

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