“Raising Unshirted Hell”: The Journalism of Norma Fields, State Capitol Correspondent for the <i>Northeast</i> (MS) <i>Daily Journal</i>

This article examines the career of journalist Norma Fields, who worked for the Northeast (MS) Daily Journal for twenty-four years (1964–1988), first as a part-time stringer and then as a political correspondent covering the state capitol in Jackson. The research featured herein analyzes the type of stories she covered, the content of her weekly political column, her style of reporting, and how each may have influenced state policy. The findings illuminate Fields’s influence as the first woman to cover the Mississippi state capitol on the perceptions of women journalists held by members of the state government. Fields’s story adds to a growing body of literature in the areas of women’s history and journalism history, which has omitted the experiences of women political correspondents at the state level, and this article describes a brand of journalism and set of professional experiences that challenged the status quo.