She covered the White House during five presidential administrations, as a reporter for the Associated Press from 1929 to 1936, then as a correspondent for The New York Times from 1943 to 1961.

[4] She graduated with a professional life teacher's certificate in 1917 and returned to teaching, but her efforts at the student newspaper impressed the editor of the Kearney Daily Hub enough to offer her a job there.

[3] In February 1920, Furman was offered a position at the Omaha Daily News as a feature writer on the Sunday magazine.

[3] She worked to develop an identity with the pseudonym Bobbie O'Dare and in addition to features wrote a weekly column titled "Observing Omaha.

[3] She drove her Ford Model T (nicknamed "Sylvia") to Rapid City, South Dakota to report on the activities of President Calvin Coolidge and his wife as they took the first presidential vacation in the Western United States in 1927; her photos of the couple appeared on the front page of the Omaha Bee-News for several days.

[3] In 1928 Furman covered the Omaha campaign stop of Alf Landon, winning a prize from Bookman magazine for her color story "We Want Al!

"[3] Her story about Landon's campaign stop caught the attention of the chief of the Associated Press, Byron Price, who offered Furman a position at the AP Washington Office in 1929.

[7] In 1934, Furman, Ruby Black, Dorothy Ducas of the International News Service, and Emma Bugbee of the New York Herald Tribune accompanied Roosevelt to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, reporting on the poverty they saw there.

[7] Another group was referred to by Roosevelt as "the faithful four": Furman, Black, Martha Strayer of the Washington News, and Genevieve (Geno) Herrick of the Chicago Tribune.

[6][5] She was anxious to return to newspaper journalism, and she joined The New York Times in 1943 as part of the Washington bureau.

[6] In addition to writing political stories of interest to women, during this time she became increasingly focused on issues of health and education.

[2] Furman published her autobiography, Washington By-line: the Personal History of a Newspaperwoman, in 1949, detailing many life stories.