Where Are the Women?
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NIEMAN REPORTS WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? Why We Need More Female Newsroom Leaders LANCE IVERSEN/SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/CORBIS LANCE FRANCISCO IVERSEN/SAN At Mother Jones, Monika Bauerlein, left, and Clara Jeffery share editing responsibilities. They and other top editors discuss the lack of women in journalism leadership in our cover story on page 28. To share your own story, visit nieman.harvard.edu/womeninjournalism BACK COVER: (TOP) ENRIQUE DE LA OSA/REUTERS, (BOTTOM) ILLUSTRATION BY TONY MILLIONAIRE www.niemanreports.org The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University PUBLISHER EDITOR EDITORIAL OFFICES Please address all subscription correspondence to: Ann Marie Lipinski James Geary One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 [email protected] and change of address information to: SENIOR EDITOR RESEARCHER/REPORTER P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 Jan Gardner Jonathan Seitz Copyright 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. ISSN Number 0028-9817 Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts and additional entries DESIGN EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE Postmaster: Send address changes to Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, Pentagram Isabel Campbell-Gross SUBSCRIPTIONS/BUSINESS Manchester, NH 03108 Rebecca Mazur 617-496-6299, [email protected] TRANSLATORS Tara W. Merrigan Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) Subscription $25 a year, $40 for two years; Jaclyn Gilstrap Jessie Schanzle is published in March, June, September add $10 per year for foreign airmail. and December by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard Ted Henken Single copies $7.50. University, One Francis Avenue, Juan O. Tamayo Back copies are available from the Nieman office. Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 NIEMAN REPORTS COVER 28 Where Are the Women? Despite making up half the population and receiving the majority of communication degrees, women currently SUMMER 2014 VOL. 68 NO. 3 lead only three of the nation’s top 25 newspapers. What’s TO PROMOTE AND ELEVATE THE STANDARDS OF JOURNALISM lost when women aren’t leading? What can be done to increase their ranks at the top? Plus, top female journalists on how to redress gender imbalance in the newsroom— and why it matters STORYBOARD 8 Finding the Tribe Podcasts are making a comeback By Cynthia Graber FEATURES 14 “Thick Files and a Long Memory” The risk of reporting the facts in Cuba By Juan O. Tamayo 18 Facts, Not Opinions News sites are bypassing Cuban censorship By Hugo A. Landa 19 It’s Good to Talk DEPARTMENTS The difficult path for Cuba’s opposition journalists By Robert de JesÚs Guerra Pérez 2 FROM THE CURATOR By Ann Marie Lipinski 20 Island in the Storm How citizen journalists are keeping Cuba honest 4 LIVE@LIPPMANN By Yoani Sánchez Atlantic editor Scott Stossel 22 Plus ça change... 6 NIEMANS@WORK The French press is weathering a revolution of its own The casualties of By Peter Gumbel the conflict in Gaza; privacy and data gathering; film as visual long-form 50 NIEMAN JOURNALISM LAB The rise of native advertising By Joshua Benton 52 BOOKS Excerpt from “Deadline,” a photographic tribute to The Philadelphia Inquirer WATCHDOG By Will Steacy 44 Ready for the Big One 56 NIEMAN NOTES How journalism can help prevent disasters by reporting on them before they happen 60 SOUNDING By John Dyer Ameto Akpe, NF ’14 FROM THE CURATOR A Seat at the Table Even as the journalism industry evolves, familiar patterns of exclusion remain he lunch for the summer interns was discrimination is, largely, not a millstone Women are not ascending to the top jobs held at the editor’s swanky men’s club. our daughters bear and both our gratitude in any media sector at anywhere near the The other interns and I had arrived and shame run deep for the indignities that rate they’re entering the journalism school T pipeline. In some media quarters, their ahead of the brass and I took my seat in one many endured to get us to this place. Yet of the club’s private dining rooms, next to in recent conversations with dozens of col- movement has been backward. Melanie Sill, the woman who ran the intern program. leagues, a disquiet emerged over the state who has served as editor of two newspapers Her name was Sheila Wolfe and we had of female leadership in journalism. I had and is now vice president of a public radio barely smoothed the napkins onto our laps noticed some familiar and unhealthy orga- station, gave Griffin a bleak assessment: when a gentleman leaned in and whispered nizational patterns being replicated in the “We’re slipping, as an industry and maybe his audacious request: Would Wolfe and I digital start-up world, so began talking to as a society, back to a place where women please relocate from the center of the table women leaders I knew, then calling others I didn’t get the same opportunities and didn’t to the far end lest club members be exposed had never met, to ask what they were seeing. have the same influence.” to the sight of women as they passed our The stories unspooled across generations We began discussing this issue of Nieman dining room. and media types. Reports before Jill Abramson was fired as I froze, less out of defiance than shock. I heard from a broadcast executive who said editor of The New York Times and, on the I was naive, fresh off an enlightened college there were greater opportunities for women same day, Natalie Nougayrède resigned under campus where sexism typically wielded a at her network when she began her ascent pressure at Le Monde. Although the data duller blade, not the sharp point of the hushed 25 years ago, then ticked through a roster were there and ripe for analysis, there is insult that afternoon in one of Chicago’s of prestigious producer posts once held by no doubt that the twin big-league depar- elite temples of business. women but now exclusively male. From tures crystalized what had been for many “We’re quite comfortable here,” said Wolfe. a young owner of a widely praised digital a lonely or latent feeling of gender regres- The man began to restate his request when start-up who described the frustrations of sion in the news industry. No matter where Wolfe, a tiny, fierce force in the newsroom, trying to crack the venture capital fraternity. people came out on the merits of the two quietly took hold of the table’s edge with From an executive of a start-up who took women’s management tenures, many were both hands. “I said, we are sitting here.” the back seat to her male partner because especially rankled by the mostly anonymous She didn’t speak of it again. The masthead she thought that would be more agreeable to descriptions of them as “brusque,” “pushy,” editors arrived, lunch was served, and the the VCs. From an accomplished beat writer “authoritarian,” even “Putin-like.” Chicago Tribune’s interns heard from the at a national publication crushed to learn For a number of women managers I most powerful men at the paper. of the pay disparity in her job. know—some of whom worked for men Sometime later, while searching through Anecdotes are, alas, merely anecdotal. And who were lionized for throwing typewriters archives, I learned Wolfe once had made not everyone is disheartened. One colleague in the newsroom—the language carried a news as a reporter when denied access to argues that there has been too much focus post-traumatic wallop, with a twist. They the main door of a men’s club where she at the top of the pyramid and not enough seized upon it not merely to commiserate had gone to cover a government official. on progress just below that and in smaller but to activate a long overdue conversa- She was redirected to a separate entry for markets. But in Anna Griffin’s cover story, tion. One news executive wrote me: “I think women, completed her assignment, then we find ballast to support the concerns. this is an epic moment. Judging from the publicly dismissed the door as the “conta- e-mail traffic I am getting, women … are gious disease entrance.” filled with these stories and we at last have As I type these words, they seem even to a platform for beginning to talk about them me like some manufactured morality play with younger women in a way that might from an American Girl storybook, not some- Women are not actually help alter careers.” She and others thing that happened in my lifetime. I have ascending to the top are working on some strategies to do this been, with some exceptions, fortunate in my and it is my hope that our coverage here career and my bosses, most of whom have jobs at the rate they’re advances that work. been men. The experience of such overt entering the pipeline I once was visited by a Japanese writer 2 Nieman Reports | Summer 2014 horizons through a Nieman African journalism’s highest Fellowship at Harvard in honor, the Nat Nakasa Award 1964, he grabbed it with both for Courageous Journalism, hands. The price, however, which is awarded annually to was huge. The apartheid a media practitioner such regime said he had to forsake as a journalist, editor, his home country and manager, or owner who has become stateless, a wanderer, shown integrity, reported as he himself put it. fearlessly, and displayed He made that difficult a commitment to serve the decision because in that people of South Africa. departure Nat saw the Nat was no firebrand possibility of serving South revolutionary.