Women of Color Missing From Op-Ed Debate
“Surely you’ve noticed, I certainly have, that in our cultural lexicon, all the ‘women’ are white, and women of color are ‘minorities,'” Betty Bayé, editorial writer and columnist for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., told Journal-isms today. “It’s usually the case that debates having to do with ‘women’s issues’ are about white women. But let the subject be welfare, crack, prison or obesity, and count on it, the women in the spotlight are women of color, and it’s been that way for a mighty long time.”
Bayé was among the women columnists of color asked to comment on why their voices are not heard in the latest debate about the disproportionate number of men on op-ed pages.
“It comes down to the numbers game,” replied Esther Wu, local columnist at the Dallas Morning News and president of the Asian American Journalists Association. “We simply don’t have enough women in the pipeline who are in line to take on the role of editorial writer.
“Newsroom tradition dictates that the coveted jobs go to ‘senior’ writers, managers and sometimes company officials.
“How many women of color do you see in line for these positions?
“It’s not that we don’t have anything important to say or that women of color are not deep-thinkers. But I believe that women of color are not taken seriously in the newsroom. We are not contenders for ‘important jobs.’
“White women have just begun to crack the code to become managers in the newsroom and women of color are beginning to join them.
“But until we break this glass ceiling, our opinions will not be heard.”
In today’s round of news on this front, Dave Astor reported, in Editor & Publisher that, “The percentage of female opinion columnists on major-syndicate rosters has risen very slightly since 1999, according to an E&P study.
“E&P looked at the Web sites of eight major distributors, and found that 33 of 135 opinion writers—24.4%—are women. When we previously studied the numbers nearly six years ago, 23.7% of these writers were women (E&P magazine, Aug. 21, 1999).
“Growth has obviously slowed, because the 23.7% figure from 1999 rose nearly nine percentage points from 1989—when 14.8% of op-ed columnists were female.
He noted that, “The percentage of female writers has been in the news lately as Creators Syndicate columnist Susan Estrich has criticized the Los Angeles Times for not publishing more women on its op-ed page (E&P Online, March 7).”
Occasionally, the number of female opinion columnists has been linked with the number of columnists of color.
In his Oct. 1, 2001, article in The Progressive magazine, “Why The Washington Post Op-ed Page Is So Dull,” Colman McCarthy wrote that, “In a recent three-month span—May, June, and July of this year—424 columns appeared. Only twenty-six were by women. . . . Blacks and Hispanics were equally shorted.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Geneva Overholser, then a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, raised the issue, writing a National Public Radio commentary about the “haunting silence of women’s voices” on op-ed pages discussing the tragedy.
“To test my feeling,” she later wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, “I examined the op-ed pages of three of our most influential newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times. I found that, in the first week after September 11, they carried eighty-eight signed pieces. Five were by women.”
“Numbers for people of color are also dismal,” she said privately at the time.
The Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, former USA Today columnist and a black woman, told Journal-isms today, “As you know more than 90 percent of the decisions make in the news rooms, especially in opinion writing are made by white males, who rarely relinquish control without severe social or economic calamity.
“When they are led to share a token piece of influence or power it goes to those usually found in their own households: their mothers, sisters or wives,” continued Reynolds, who now writes for the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service. “Next on the pecking order are men, even men of color, who white men can sometimes bond with over sex, sports and domination. Women of color, however, are generally not seen as sharing the same values and eagerness to protect white values, institutions and culture. . . . Women of color who are independent thinkers do not survive long in this business. If a woman of color, however, does fight for white values, going against the needs of her own people, that is generally well-rewarded not only with more opinion-writing opportunities, but also to become a part of the punditocracy, which through television and radio helps shape the national political and social agenda.”
The women columnists who are speaking out are far from united on the role their gender plays.
In the New York Times on Sunday, Maureen Dowd, the only female among what will soon be eight Times Op-Ed columnists, wrote:
“Men take professional criticism more personally when it comes from a woman. When I wrote columns about the Clinton impeachment opéra bouffe, Chris Matthews said that for poor Bill, it must feel as though he had another wife hectoring him.
“While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it’s seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I’m often asked how I can be so ‘mean’—a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn’t get.”
But in the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum, that paper’s only regular female op-ed columnist, wrote today: “Possibly because I see so many excellent women around me at the newspaper, possibly because so many of The Post’s best-known journalists are women, possibly because I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘female journalist’ in any case, I hadn’t felt especially lonely.”
Is there a woman’s point of view?
On the National Conference of Editorial Writers listserve, Maura Causey of The Day in New London, Conn., wrote: “In a perfect world it really wouldn’t matter that The New York Times has just one female columnist, and the rest are men. All things being equal it wouldn’t matter whether or not a woman is on any editorial board. But in reality, to many of us, it does matter, because some topics will—much of the time—speak more to women than to men. The need for paid maternity leave, for example. Child care issues. Flextime. The fact that, until a several years ago, research on breast cancer was underfunded. Should these topics be thought of as ‘women’s issues’? Absolutely not. Are they of more concern to women than to men? Sadly, most of the time, I think so. Is it useful to have a woman’s voice on such issues? I believe it is.”
She was responding to another woman who wrote, “Why would I care how many female editorial writers there are? How many female columnists? How many ‘topics appealing to women?’ How insufferably patronizing.”
The imbalance also extends to letters to the editor, an area where readers of color traditionally participate less than others.
In a summer 2001 article in The Masthead, the quarterly publication of the editorial writers group, two Hartford Courant writers documented that two-thirds of their letter writers were men.
They received 150 replies when they asked readers why women don’t write.
“The biggest reason was summed up aptly by the woman who wrote a two-word response: ‘Too busy,'” the Courant staffers wrote.
“The next biggest reason was fear. Several women related instances of having written letters and then having received harassing phone calls at home, even though the Courant does not give out letter writers’ telephone numbers.
“. . . Some women said they assumed that letters from men would get preference, or that a woman’s opinion would not be taken serious[ly] or that they were raised to think their opinion[s] don’t count as much as men’s do.”
Aldape, Coulson to Keynote Minority Writers Seminar; application deadline is March 19 (National Conference of Editorial Writers)
Adventures in Opinion Writing: No Easy Answers (Elizabeth Spiers, Mediabistro.com)
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“Incredible Outpouring” for Detroit’s Emery King
Terminated Detroit anchor Emery King went on talk radio today to thank supporters in the city for their “incredible outpouring, crossing all kinds of ethnic lines, social lines, racial lines,” he told Journal-isms tonight.
“People are realizing what they’re missing in this business of television news,” King said. “There is a general desire for dignity, ethics and standards. This outpouring isn’t about me, it’s about that.”
King, 56, went on the “Inside Detroit” show on WCHB-AM today as it broadcast from the new Detroit School of the Fine and Performing Arts.
King, who said it was the first time he had been fired in his 35 years in the business, said he appeared on the show because his wife, attorney and he decided that he had to respond to the outpouring.
Meanwhile, “It looks like WDIV-TV (Channel 4) might be the target of some sort of protest or perhaps a boycott in the aftermath of its choosing not to renew the contract of veteran news anchor Emery King,” the Detroit Free Press reported today.
“Several members of the civil rights community in Detroit, asking for anonymity, have indicated they would support organized action against the Post-Newsweek-owned station. A formal announcement could come in the next few days.”
King, who is under contract to WDIV-TV until March 31, said he did not want to comment on the report. WDIV is a Post-Newsweek station.
Bush Propagandizing Seen as Harmful Overseas
“It must be tempting for the leader of the sole superpower to imagine that he can define reality and impose it on the rest of world,” Los Angeles Times columnist Andrés Martinez wrote this week. “But it’s a dangerous temptation as the United States, for all its might, depends to an alarming degree on the trust of foreigners ? increasingly the trust of a handful of Asian central banks ? who are financing the nation’s rising debt. The United States borrows $2 billion a day from overseas to maintain Americans’ lavish lifestyle ? a factoid you won’t hear about in any taxpayer-financed fake news report.”
Martinez wrote after David Barstow and Robin Stein reported Sunday in the New York Times that, “at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgment of the government’s role in their production.”
(One of the stations using the spots was WHBQ in Memphis, where Kenneth W. Jobe is vice president for news. [Added March 17: “I wasn’t even in the building then. Obviously, this was a mistake and it shouldn’t have happened,” he told Journal-isms.])
On Tuesday, Christopher Lee reported in the Washington Post that the administration rejected an opinion from the Government Accountability Office that it was illegal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government’s role in producing them.
Martinez continued, “Foreign central banks buy U.S. currency, in the form of Treasury notes, the way you buy stock in a company. Trouble is, they also can sell it the way you can dump stock when you lose faith in a company. . . . Foreign investors don’t want to trust their money to a country governed by propagandists. That’s why they invested in the U.S. in the first place.”
And Now, the Counterfeit News (Editorial, New York Times)
Viewer Beware (Editorial, Washington Post)
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Newsweek’s Mabry to Write Condoleezza Rice Bio
Marcus Mabry, chief of correspondents at Newsweek, has begun the first of two three-month book leaves to begin a biography of the secretary of state, to be called, “Twice as Good: The Souls of Condoleezza Rice,” Mabry told Journal-isms today.
Rodale announced that its executive editor, Leigh Haber, had acquired North American rights to the book and that Mabry was expected to complete the manuscript in 18 months.
Mabry said he first met Rice when he returned from an overseas tour in 1999 and joined the Council on Foreign Relations. She spoke before “500 old white men” who were “just wowed by her.”
“Coincidentally, both concentrated their studies at Stanford on the Soviet Union,” Rodale said in a news release. “It is from this uniquely shared perspective that he will write a biography that not only tells the story of the most powerful African American woman in the history of U.S. politics but also examines the larger questions of identity, race, class and politics that her story poses for blacks, whites and both political parties.”
Mabry, who was last in this column in his role as co-chair of the new Lesbian and Gay Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists, said he would also produce “a comprehensive personal story. She’s the highest ranking black woman in the country and we don’t really know her,” he said.
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Source Magazine Backs Sharpton on Violence
“Rev. Al Sharpton has spoken with Radio One, Clear Channel. and Emmis Communications in response to his call for Rhythm & Blues and hip hop stations to ban artists promoting violence for 90 days,” Raegan Johnson wrote Monday in Mediaweek.
“. . . Sharpton called for the ban after last month?s gunfire outside the studios of Emmis R&B/hip-hop WQHT-FM (Hot 97) New York following an in-station interview with rapper 50 Cent.
“Last week, hip hop magazine The Source, announced that it would support the efforts of Sharpton and the institution of the 90-day ban.
?’It is inspiring to see that Rev. Al Sharpton is speaking out against the crisis of corporate manipulation of violence in the hip-hop industry, which is benefiting the bottom line of a few major conglomerates,’ said David Mays, co-founder and CEO of The Source.
“Mays also added that The Source doesn?t support the censorship of artists, but is opposed to artists and their backers using incitements of violence over the airwaves to promote record sales.
“Sharpton and The Source hope the 90-day ban will incite accountability for violence in the hip hop community.”
An Arbiter of Hip-Hop Finds Itself as the Target (New York Times) `
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For Black Press Week, a Call to Fight Harder
“This week, as Black publishers of the 200-member National Newspaper Publishers Association converged on Capitol Hill in Washington to visit with lawmakers in celebration of Black Press Week, many concede that after nearly two centuries of fighting for Black people—from the lynching and Jim Crow of yesterday to the police profiling and economic inequality of today—the Black Press has not fought nearly hard enough for itself,” Hazel Trice Edney wrote this week for the news service of the NNPA, the association of black newspaper publishers.
“And there is much to fight for.
?’This is the first time I have ever known that the Democratic Party almost totally ignored the Black Press as far as advertising in its publications,’ says Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the Chicago New Crusader. ‘They did this targeted kind of advertising in battleground states and ignored the rest of the Black Press.’?
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David Diaz of WCBS Says Goodbye After 27 Years
“Veteran New York correspondent David Diaz said farewell to his WCBS/Ch.2 colleagues yesterday as he retired from the broadcasting business,” Richard Huff reported yesterday in the New York Daily News.
“‘I’d been thinking about it for some time,’ Diaz told the Daily News. ‘I thought there were other things that I haven’t done in my life. . . . It’s been a great career. I’ve enjoyed it, sometimes.'”
“The times he didn’t enjoy involved covering tragedies, he said.
“Diaz said his contract at Ch.2 expired yesterday and that he felt he could have stayed with the station if he wanted, but chose to leave, instead.”
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108 Writers Support Jailed Cuban Journalists
“More than 100 prominent writers, editors, and reporters throughout Latin America joined the Committee to Protect Journalists today in calling on Cuban President Fidel Castro to immediately release 23 jailed journalists, saying the two-year-long imprisonments violate ‘the most basic norms of international law’ and represent ‘an affront to human dignity,'” the committee reported today.
“The demand, made in a letter sent today to Castro and signed by 108 writers from 18 countries, comes nearly two years to the day that Cuban authorities swept up dozens of independent journalists and dissidents in a massive effort to silence political criticism. Signers of today’s letter include Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, Argentine author Tomás Eloy Martínez, Brazilian journalist Geraldinho Vieira, and Venezuelan editor Teodoro Petkoff.”
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Spanish, English Papers Form Alliance in Chicago
A new arrangement to share editorial content was signed on Friday between Chicago’s Spanish-language La Raza and Fox Valley Publications, which publishes five daily English-language suburban newspapers in the Windy City,” Nancy Ayala and Moses Frenck reported Monday in Editor & Publisher.
“Robert Armband, publisher of weekly La Raza, shared the news with Marketing y Medios during the National Association of Hispanic Publications annual conference in Philadelphia, which took place March 9-12.
“The mutually beneficial bilingual format will reach out to the Hispanic community, especially in Fox Valley newspapers distributed in densely Hispanic areas, such as in Aurora, Ill., where Latinos represent one-third of the population, Armband says.”
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Azteca America Expands to Colorado
“Hispanic television network Azteca America has expanded into Colorado, and can be seen on broadcast channels KZCO-27 in Denver, KZFC-36 in Ft. Collins-Greeley, and KZCS-23 in Colorado Springs/Pueblo,” John Consoli reported Monday in Mediaweek
“Azteca America is now available in 38 U.S. markets. Azteca America Colorado is owned and operated by McGraw-Hill Broadcasting.”
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In India, a News Giant Crushes a Blogger
“In India, a flourishing business for print media doesn’t translate to flourishing media criticism,” Mark Glaser wrote Tuesday for the Online Journalism Review.
After citing growing circulation figures, Glaser wrote:
“But along with that success has come a dumbing down of the news as large mega-media corporations have gained control of newspapers—and have even invested in each other’s stock. So when one of the few noted media critics, Pradyuman Maheshwari, criticized the Times of India on his Mediaah Weblog recently, the Times looked to squash him with a seven-page legal threat for libel. The threat worked, and Maheshwari decided to close his site, as he has a day job running the daily Maharashtra Herald in Pune and didn’t have the resources to fight back.”