Canadian Women Print Journalists Narrate Their Careers
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
All the Resistance That’s Fit to Print: Canadian Women Print Journalists Narrate Their Careers by Vivian Smith BA, University of Western Ontario, 1975 MA, University of Western Ontario, 1977 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of PHD in Interdisciplinary Studies Vivian Smith, 2012 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee All the Resistance That’s Fit to Print: Canadian Women Print Journalists Narrate Their Careers by Vivian Smith BA, University of Western Ontario, 1975 MA, University of Western Ontario, 1977 Supervisory Committee Dr. Lynne Van Luven (Department of Writing) Co-Supervisor Dr. Darlene Clover (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies) Co-Supervisor Dr. Annalee Lepp (Department of Women’s Studies) Committee Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Lynne Van Luven (Department of Writing) Co-Supervisor Dr. Darlene Clover (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies) Co-Supervisor Dr. Annalee Lepp (Department of Women’s Studies) Committee Member Canadian women print journalists both protest against and acquiesce to the patriarchal culture of newspapering in their daily work. Utilizing narrative analysis and the feminist theory of intersectionality, this dissertation argues that other social characteristics interact with gender as practitioners negotiate the multiple hegemonies of their workplace, and that the impacts of these characteristics change over time. The purpose of the qualitative study was to do fieldwork needed to respond to scholarly uncertainty about journalists’ individual motivations on the job and their perceived impact on the socio-political agenda. Individual interviews and focus groups were conducted over 2010-2011. Participants included 26 Canadian women print journalists in five newspapers across Canada, as well as one former journalist, now an academic. Key generational differences appeared when participants’ stories were examined with age and gender intersecting as an organizing theme. Senior participants tended to see themselves as lucky survivors in frustratingly gendered newsrooms; those in mid-career were self-sacrificing, hard workers who needed, but were not getting, workplace flexibility; and the most junior ones presented themselves as individual strategists, capable of handling whatever routine injustices iv were thrown at them. They wanted to stay in the business long enough to “choose” between careers and parenthood, with technological proficiency as a lifeline. Participants’ narratives revealed how the most senior tended to combine their multiple identities and externalities into a coherent whole, while younger participants experimented with and exploited aspects of their complex identities and larger societal influences to survive in a high-stress, gendered environment. This study produces evidence that the participants’ career paths are influenced in fluid and often hidden ways by other characteristics as they intersect with gender. Assumptions about these characteristics, such as age, race, parenthood status and class, further complicate the shaping of participants’ experiences in their workplaces, offering them other possible positions from which to either reinforce or resist the newsroom culture. The participants take up navigating these confused seas in ways that often leave them frustrated and angry, but ultimately most say they feel they make a difference in the socio-political agenda because of their complex identities and as voices for those deemed “voiceless.” v Table of Contents Supervisory Committee .................................................................................................................. ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ v Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................ viii Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction: Are You Still Here?............................................................................................... 1 From concern to action ........................................................................................................... 4 The study in context ................................................................................................................ 8 Purpose .................................................................................................................................. 14 Objectives ............................................................................................................................. 15 Role/Place of the Researcher ................................................................................................ 17 Theoretical Framework ......................................................................................................... 18 Significance........................................................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 21 The Story So Far: Context and Background ............................................................................. 21 Stories of Girls in the Balcony and Behind the Washroom .................................................. 21 Taylorism and the Legacy of ‘Scientific Management’ ....................................................... 29 Journalistic Traditions of Ordering the News ....................................................................... 32 Gendered Responses to Traditional Discourses .................................................................... 34 Intersectionality: Key debates around gender, parenthood, race, disability ......................... 39 Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................................................... 48 Methodology and Procedures: My Three Years of Slowing Down, or ... ................................ 48 Narrative Analysis: “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live” ...................................... 50 Stories of Our Brilliant Careers ............................................................................................ 55 Narrating the Narrators ......................................................................................................... 57 The Truth, or Something Like It ........................................................................................... 59 Procedural dramas, close encounters, insights and screw-ups .............................................. 61 Who, What, When, Where and How, More Specifically ...................................................... 63 I’ll Show You Mine, if You’ll Show Me Yours ................................................................... 69 Reflexivity Takes the Stand .................................................................................................. 71 Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................................................... 75 Such luck: senior women print journalists explain their careers .............................................. 75 Luck, longevity and a passion for story ................................................................................ 77 The defining business of being an outsider........................................................................... 80 ‘Let’s just say I am happy’ .................................................................................................... 85 ‘A story that is connected to your heart is glued to you’ ...................................................... 89 ‘Journalism is easy if you have a wife at home’ ................................................................... 94 ‘If I had kids, I don’t think I’d be where I am’ ..................................................................... 98 ‘I still think this business needs me to change it’ ............................................................... 103 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 108 Chapter 5 ..................................................................................................................................... 112 Mid-career participants: hard work, sacrifice and a search for flexibility .............................. 112 vi ‘I’ve found what I love to do and I want to get better and better doing it ’ ........................ 114 ‘They’re going to find out that I am a total fraud’ .............................................................. 118 ‘If you’ve never experienced racism, you’ll never know the pain of it’ ............................. 121 ‘Will my son