Tabloid journalist as P.O.W: The war diaries of Dorothy Gordon Jenner

In 1941 Australian tabloid journalist Dorothy Gordon Jenner was caught up in the Japanese siege of Hong Kong and was incarcerated in the Stanley Internment Camp. During her internment Jenner kept a clandestine record of daily life written in pencil on Bronco brand toilet paper and kept hidden in the heels of her shoes. To date her fragmented diary and notes have defied analysis. This paper provides a reading of Jenner's personal wartime testimonio through the frame of tabloid journalism to expose how the tabloid genre - Jenner's stock-in-trade as a journalist before the war - became the framework for her personal testimony during World War II. By interpreting Jenner's private diary and notes as testimonio journalism this paper exposes the flow of the tabloid vernacular style of journalism between private and public discourses.