Chris Nolan, "Blogging Was Just the Beginning:
Women's Voices are Louder Online" (Page 4 of 5)
The high point of this like-meets-like-and-likes-it story was
probably the broadcast interview that consummate New York insider Charlie
Rose (mp3) conducted with Reynolds, well-known editor (turned blogger)
Andrew Sullivan, and—just to round things out—Ana Marie Cox,
who had been hired to run the Washington, D.C.-based gossip blog,
Wonkette.
Notice the disparity in this line-up. Cox is a talented writer, but
at Wonkette she was an employee,
not the founder of the site (that distinction went to Gawker Media
founder Nick Denton). And her main stock-in-trade was jokes and asides
about anal or girl-on-girl sex.
I'd love to say I'm making this up. I'm not.
It wasn't entirely hopeless. The male stranglehold on political
conversations would, from time to time, make some of the self-conscious
liberal men writing online wonder about the state of their distaff
counterparts. WashingtonMonntly.com's Kevin Drum was perhaps the last blogger to openly contemplate what he saw as the absence of
women in online political forums. His musings triggered an online
discussion and exchange that singed more than a few eyebrows.[1]
Drum made the mistake of wondering not just "where" the women
bloggers were but also of generalizing about women's attitudes based on
his personal experience. The women he knew didn't like the Internet's
loud give-and-take, he said. That may be why they stay away, he
theorized.
Drum is not wondering where women are online any more. It isn't that
there were no women writing about politics online. It's that Drum wasn't
reading the women who were writing. Making matters even worse was the
misunderstanding of the medium that the Monthly—known for its
long-standing hostility toward female writing talent—demonstrated as it
rushed to do damage control. It called on Katha Pollitt and the site's
managing editor, Amy Sullivan, to talk about their attitudes, as women,
toward blogging and online political writing.
The whole follow-up reeked of the kind of patronizing that many of us
on the Web find so annoying when established media figures come to call.
Instead of looking online, where a vibrant and thorough discussion of
this issue had already taken place, the Monthly behaved as any
traditional news outlet would. Cynics—that is to say those of us with
newsroom experience—could almost hear the editor thinking, as so many
of our former bosses once thought: "Quick, let's get a famous feminist
in here pronto to show that we mean no harm."
This is the typical response to the byline count, and it further
underscores my and others' frustration with that process and the
attitude it demonstrates. It's thinking that assumes there are limited
outlets for discussion and that the traditional and established ways of
doing things—bringing in the "expert" writer, for instance, or
pressuring the editors—remains the best strategy in the new online
environment.
I've noticed something similar at ThePolitico.com. It has recruited a
group of big name political journalists—men from Time magazine,
the Washington Post, and other outlets—to work in an online
environment. By the standards of Washington political journalism, this
whole undertaking is considered daring. But what struck me about the
site's masthead on the day it opened for business was something sadly
familiar: its most prominent female reporter was
its gossip columnist. Unlike on Wonkette, the sex jokes
will be kept to a
minimum but, unfortunately, the stereotyping seems likely to
continue.
But—and this is what's really important—ThePolitico.com and
TheWashingtonMonthly.com aren't the only games online. And that's why
women who really care about politics and public discourse should be
starting and supporting sites and other efforts that serve our needs.
Because trust me—and you're not reading this on a piece of paper you
got in the mail are you?—online is where the true force of true change
resides.
Women in particular know their media outlets aren't serving their
needs. Take a long look at the women who trounced Drum (he cheerfully
lists them). Or at Arianna Huffington's HuffingtonPost, which
started after she grasped
the power that bloggers had tried to corral and did them one better.
The HuffPo's size pretty much dwarfs every blog or Web site mentioned in
this piece. Look at businesses like BlogHer,
an advertising network and
conference set up to serve women writing online. Global Voices,
a consortium
of bloggers around the world dedicated to reporting and writing about
human rights and other causes in their native lands was cofounded by a
woman, former CNN correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon. These days a woman
with something to say doesn't need to wait for the newsroom chain of
command to recognize her worth. She doesn't have to worry about looking
too old on television. She doesn't have to wait for some editor to "get
it." She can start a Web site.
Unfortunately, what many people still see online is either the rough
work of bloggers or the highly polished work of traditional media
outlets culling ad dollars from their existing sponsors. We're seeing a
crop of efforts that try to serve women with fashion and celebrity
gossip, family sites that make baby-talk to "mommies," and the "Sex in
the City"-inspired bows to "girl-power." PopSugar and Glam.com are the most recent entries. These
sites are only imitating the restricted world they see on TV and in
paper-based media. The result is nothing more than cynical attempts to
ghettoize women's voices online the way they're ghettoized offline, all
with an eye to the ad dollars. Some will work because they do, in fact,
rack up ad revenue. But, ultimately, I think, many will fail. Bored,
dissatisfied readers will move on—with the click of a mouse.
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