Chris Nolan, "Blogging Was Just the Beginning:
Women's Voices are Louder Online" (Page 2 of 5)
Why was Judy Dean's economic common sense so easily
dismissed?
It's pretty obvious if you're a woman looking at how women's roles in
politics are discussed and who leads that discussion. On my television,
Speaker Pelosi's victory celebration in November was narrated by former
sports anchor Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, a former White House
speechwriter and aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neil. On Sundays, I can
glimpse Cokie
Roberts—daughter of two much-loved Washington figures—between
former presidential counselors George Will and George Stephanopoulos. Or
I can watch Tim Russert with occasional guest, Andrea Mitchell—wife of
former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan—grill various
politicos.
Now, the point here isn't to belittle the women who have managed to
become part of the media establishment. It is, instead, to underscore
the closed nature of that establishment. It's a narrowing that started
when editors at the big papers started hiring young men like
themselves—well-off, Ivy-educated—to cover politics and public
affairs.
The situation has only worsened as the number of news
outlets—particularly newspapers—have contracted. Competition for reporting
jobs became more intense, and fewer jobs meant fewer opportunities for
anyone wanting to cover politics, diplomacy, or public policy.
Regardless of gender, those who got seats at the table are and were less
likely to welcome any competition. Editors hired reporters and writers
who they felt had the right qualifications and, as with almost every
other industry, those qualifications—real or imagined—reflected
editors' own experience. Like hired like.
The obvious—and easy—response to the lack of women writers at
traditional outlets has been to count bylines and mount publicity
campaigns. Political activist
Susan Estrich started this idea when
she took a look at the Los Angeles Times roster and found that it lacking women's
voices.
Byline counting is a little
bit of quota mischief that's created some pressure on editors to mend
their ways. But counting looks back to an industry that's in the throes
of tremendous change, not ahead to capitalizing on the changes that are
coming in the media business. Like many efforts at reform, byline
counting assumes that the large media outlets will remain dominant in
American culture and commentary, using the forms and formats they
already employ today. That's simply not the case.
Perhaps more importantly, the focus on what has happened shifts
attention away from what could—and should—be done to expand and deepen
the reporting, writing, and commentary that women can and should do.
I think, in no small part because I'm doing it, that there's enormous
opportunity for anyone willing to turn away from established media
outlets to live and work on the Web. No, it's not paper. Yes, there's a
chance your friends won't read it and might not have heard of it. And
no, it's not—for now—as influential as the established outlets. But
those older, stately doors are closed—for financial and other
reasons—right now to almost everyone who wants to apply. The
frustration that's created—on both sides—is why I think the writing,
newsgathering, and commentary careers of the future are being shaped,
developed, and launched online right now.
We all know readers want something different—poll after poll shows
reader dissatisfaction. We also know that putting women in charge of the
decisions about how society, culture, and politics are covered changes
the tenor and tone of the conversation. The best example I can think of
is the once-stultifying Washington Week,
now moderated by Gwen Ifill. The program now has more women and minority
journalists appearing more regularly than any of the weekly political
chat shows I've named above. That's not a coincidence.
This picture is complicated, however, by the speed at which things
are changing in the new medium being fostered on the Internet. Although
the phenomenon of online commentary was popular in 2004 and 2006, with
this election cycle, there's an increasing distrust of the blogging
community among general-interest readers. They are finding the stark
partisanship, name-calling, bad writing, and lousy reporting often
accepted on blog sites well below their standards. This isn't a
surprise. The first people to grasp and deploy any new technology are
often those who have the most to gain—the disenfranchised, the
outraged, the rabble-rousers. And that certainly describes the first wave
of bloggers. But those sorts of efforts are almost always not
sustainable. An audience may be outraged temporarily and moved to action
but—as any organizer knows—that sense of high-octane purpose is hard,
if not impossible, to maintain for more than a short period of time.
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