Undercover Reporting

For the Nashville Tennessean in 1968, Nat Caldwell investigated Nashville's privately owned nursing homes in part by reporting above board and in part by posing as an elderly patient to spend a week at three of them.

Reporters, hired to work with phony references in nursing homes for the poor, uncover filthy conditions, unqualified employees (as evidenced by their own hiring), and undignified care of the elderly, often in the name of profit.

One of the best-remembered undercover investigations of all time. Nellie Bly feigns insanity to get herself committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's (now Roosevelt) Island.