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Joseph Lincoln Steffens (April 6, 1866 – August 9, 1936) was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in McClure's , called "Tweed Days in St. Louis", [1] that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the ...
Lincoln Steffens was an American journalist, lecturer, and political philosopher who was a leading figure among the writers whom U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt called muckrakers. He was radicalized by the Mexican and Russian revolutions, and he supported many communist activities thereafter.
Jun 8, 2018 · Learn about the life and work of Lincoln Steffens, the most famous American muckraker journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. Find out how he became a radical reformer and supporter of revolutions in Mexico and Russia.
May 13, 2011 · As one of the original “muckrakers,” Steffens wrote newspaper and magazine exposés that gave journalism a new purpose, a voice in American democracy beyond simply endorsing one party or another.
Lincoln Steffens was one of the most influential of the early muckrakers. Steffens annoyed many of the people about whom he wrote but he had a gift and a passion for investigating corruption, poverty and human failings and a penetrating interest in their causes, in the depths of human experience.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, when corruption in city government ran rampant in large American cities, one of the original muckrakers—so named by Theodore Roosevelt for their aggressive journalistic tactics in investigating controversial stories—was Lincoln Steffens. Steffens hounded corrupt city officials all across the United States.
Many Americans who in the 1930's turned toward a faith in the Russian Revolution and Communism found a special support and comfort in the familiar, home-grown figure of Lincoln Steffens.
