biography
| name: |
Steffens, (Joseph) Lincoln
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1866–1936)
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| biography:
| Journalist and social reformer, born in San Francisco, California, USA. After graduating from the University of California and studying in Europe, he became a reporter and, ultimately, city editor for the New York Post (1892–8) and then city editor on the New York Commercial Advertiser (1898–1902). As managing editor of the ‘muckraking’ McClure's magazine (1902–6), he wrote carefully researched articles documenting city government corruption that flourished in the face of public apathy. The articles, which created a sensation, were republished in The Shame of the Cities (1904), an epoch-making work in urban reform, and he also analyzed corruption and reform on the state level in The Struggle for Self-Government (1906). He was associate editor of the American (1906–7) and then Everybody's magazine (1906–11). Visiting post-revolutionary Communist Russia (1919), he made the famous comment, ‘I have seen the future and it works’. His classic Autobiography (1931) was a pungent, often sceptical commentary on the reform movement of the time. |
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