Question

Why would "10 Days in a Mad-house" be considered research and journalism?

Answer 1

Nellie Bly entered the mental facility "undercover" with the sole purpose of exposing the neglect and terrible conditions the patients faced.

"10 Days in a Mad-house" could be considered research and journalism because it tells a true story based on investigation and research for the truth. It is not a piece of fiction, nor a didactic one. It's a book based on a series of articles made with the purpose to uncover a tremendous situation, with the aim to provide better solutions.

She builds the tension of events by presenting the most horrific last.

Nellie Bly composes her journalistic piece "Ten Days in a Mad-House" and invoked her readers to anger by building the tension of events by presenting the most horrific last. In this way, people reacted in a very angry way because the last one is the one that is most likely to be remembered well by the people.

The conditions of mental-health facilities are atrocious for the patients.

The central idea from "Ten Days in a Mad-House" is that the conditions of mental-health facilities are atrocious for the patients. The book is a collection of articles made by Nellie Bly, who went undercover in mental-health facilities in order to prove that the conditions of the facilities were tremendous for the patients. 

They are meant to be entertaining and present topics that will engage the reader and draw the reader into a narrative plot.

"A Quilt of a Country", "Here is New York," and "10 Days in a Mad-house"  do not have in common their entertaining function, as they are not a narration made for entertainment purpose but for informative purpose. So, they do not engage the reader in order to entertain but to inform. The plot is based on the fact presented.

They only present facts regarding a topic

Informative texts are different from other types of writing and literature because they only present facts regarding a topic, while others forms of text could present ideas that come from imagination and do not have a correspondence with real fact, for example. Informative texts have the aim to inform.