Gendering the history of foreign correspondents: The case of Helsingin Sanomat’s Maija-Liisa Heini

Abstract

<p><span>Maija-Liisa Heini (1917–1988) was a star reporter of her time who spent most of her career working at </span><span>the biggest national newspaper in Finland, <i>Helsingin Sanomat</i>. In this article, I focus on Heini’s work during the late</span><span> 1960s as the paper’s Scandinavian correspondent. More specifically, I will use Heini as a case study to unravel the </span><span>gendered history of foreign correspondence by adopting Lonsdale’s argument that early women correspondents’ </span><span>outsider status allowed them to produce alternative narratives of foreign affairs. By analysing news and feature arti</span><span>cles written by Heini, I argue that she used her status as a journalist of high standing to disrupt existing ideas about</span><span> what constituted good foreign news journalism. In doing so, she was successful in combining a so-called feminine </span><span>writing style with a professional persona that embraced masculine traits of journalism.</span><br></p>