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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You can easily read the exchanges that took place on WashingtonMonthly.com and other sites involved in the Spring 2005 discussion of women and online political writing. Here is Kevin Drum’s initial post: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005691.php. Here is a sampling—with links back to the women bloggers who wrote to and about his remarks—of comments on what he said. It’s a very good list of sites run by and for politically-minded women: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005705.php.
Here is the post I wrote: http://www.spoton.com/archives/000696.html. And here is a second post that I wrote summing up the state of affairs online at the time, tracing how Drum and others came to their particular point of view. Much of it still holds true: http://www.spot-on.com/archives/000712.html.
Katha Pollitt’s initial post for WashingtonMonthly.com is here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005908.php. [↩]
