Lenka Franulic's 115th Birthday

Get the scoop on Lenka Franulic — today’s Doodle celebrates the first woman formally recognized as a Chilean journalist. On this day in 1908, Franulic was born in Antofagasta to Croatian immigrant parents. 

Franulic was a pioneer for women from a young age. At her high school, girls were required to take one less year of humanities than boys, and instead use the time to learn housework. At just 15 years old, she wrote to the Ministry of Education and requested that she and a few friends take the sixth year just like their male counterparts. Her request was granted and she attended the boy’s school. This was groundbreaking because this was the first instance of boys and girls sharing a classroom in Chile.

She studied English at the University of Chile in Santiago, which prepared her for her first formal journalist job translating articles at Hoy magazine. At another magazine under the same publishing house, Ercilla, she requested to move to the reporting scene. The director was skeptical about a woman reporter, and he tasked her to get an interview with a person who was known for not talking to journalists. Franulic succeeded, and she started to receive more critical and complex tasks. Over the next few years, she became one of the most significant interviewers in the country, talking with local and international politicians — including three Chilean presidents.

Having established herself as a journalist, Franulic went on to work as a reporter for radio stations, including Nuevo Mundo, Nacional, Cooperativa, and Agricultura y Minería. She also became director of the magazines Eva and Ercilla, officially proving that women can not only be reporters, but hold leadership roles guiding the work of other journalists.

Franulic helped create the Círculo de Periodistas, an organization that worked to make journalism a college degree. In 1953 she co-founded the School of Journalism at the University of Chile, the first in the country. A few years later, she received the National Journalism Award, and since 1963, Chile’s National Association of Women Journalists gives the “Lenka Franulic Award” to a woman journalist with outstanding quality work.

She is remembered for her feminist writing and attitude, elevating journalism, and being the first courageous woman to break into the male-dominated industry. Thank you for pushing boundaries, Lenka Franulic!