Reporterette (female reporter)

A “reporterette” is a female reporter. The term “reporterette” was possibly coined in the book A Yellow Journalist (1905), by Miriam Michelson (a former newspaper reporter). “Reporterette” fell into disuse after 1930, but was revived in the 1990s by conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The term “reporterette” can be considered derogatory, depending on the circumstances of use.
 
A similar media term is “infobabe.”
     
 
OCLC WorldCat record
A yellow journalist,
Author: Miriam Michelson
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton, 1905.
 
Chronicling America
29 October 1905, San Francisco (CA) Call, pg. 23, col. 1:
Story of a Reporterette; and some others
A REPORTERETTE has not the dignity of being a dictionary word, but if the name is new to you it need not puzzle you for more than a minute before you guess that it is a playful cognomen applied to a little she reporter. It is used by one of that genus, Rhoda Massey, the leading character in the new book called “The Yellow Journalist,” written by Miriam Michelson, an excellent ex-newspaper woman, now an excellent novelist, as witness the successful “In the Bishop’s Carriage” and the clever, inimitable “The Madigans.”
 
Chronicling America
27 October 1911, The Evening World (New York, NY), “Suffragettes Hold Their First City Convention And Adopt Platform, but Name No Candidates,” pg. 24, col. 2:
Mrs. Hay tossed the typewritten notes down to the reporterettes with the information that they could “give them to the men if they wanted to” AND THE BAND PLAYED ON.
       
Google News Archive
26 July 1921, Milwaukee (WI) Journal, “The Screen” by Mary Mac, pg. 8, col. 7:
When Cecil de Mille visited the Windy city recently a young reporterette, Hazel MacDonald, interviewed the noted producer.
 
Google Books
Shakespeare and “demi-science”; papers on Elizabethan topics
By Felix Emmanuel Schelling
Philadelphia, PA: Press of the University of Pennsylvania
1927
Pg. 183:
I do not remember whether Mr. Marquis told of the charming bobbed reporterette, who fixing the gaze of ingenuous childhood on the august Shakespearean countenance, asked: “Now, my dear Mr. Shakespeare, do tell me, did you really intend to make Hamlet mad?”
 
Google Books
Hearst’s International Combined with Cosmopolitan
Volume 88
1930
Pg. 194:
To confess to a little tike of a reporterette was something impossible.
 
Google Books
The Way Things Ought to Be
By Rush H. Limbaugh
New York, NY: Pocket Books
1992  
Pg. 239:
Suddenly, some local reporterette interrupted the show with a report on how the homeless were spending Thanksgiving in the shelters.
 
Google Books
See, I Told You So
By Rush H. Limbaugh
New York, NY: Pocket Books
1993
Pg. 13:
During game three of the Phoenix -Chicago NBA Championship Series, NBC Sports reporterette extraordinaire Hannah Storm did a quick interview with me.
 
New York (NY) Times
AT DINNER WITH: Rush Limbaugh; A Shy, Sensitive Guy Trying to Get By in Lib City
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 24, 1993
(...)
He (radio host Rush Limbaugh—ed.) still calls women who work for newspapers “reporterettes” and women who work on television “info-babes.”
 
RushLimbaugh.com
Reporterette Admits How It Works
February 03, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, now, listen to this. Linda Douglass is Capitol Hill correspondent for ABC News, and after the State of the Union last night, Peter Jennings is talking to this reporterette, and he says to her, “We knew before the president’s speech the Democrats are going to pick apart Social Security. Give us some sense of framework in terms of Democrats and the Republicans who are not wholly on the president’s side, Linda.”
 
RushLimbaugh.com
Drive-By Media Reporterette Laughably Claims Total Objectivity
May 11, 2007
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Listen to this audio sound bite. This was this morning on Washington Journal on C-Span. Brian Lamb is the host today, and he was talking to the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, Martha Raddatz. We talk about the Drive-Bys all over the place. One of the points I made to you about the Drive-Bys is they still carry this illusion, put forth this delusion, that as far as they’re concerned, that they are objective. They are objective—and, of course, that’s one of the big problems, because everybody knows they’re not, now.