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NEW WIJ CHARITY 2006/7
It has been a pleasure supporting Women's Aid throughout 2005.. we raised over £1800 from ticket sales, generous donations from Wiggin & Co and News International plus proceeds from the Christmas raffle.
Please would you send your nominations for this years charity to me (wijuk@aol.com) and the charity sub committee will decide a winner ( a very hard task)
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WOMEN IN JOURNALISM: TEN YEARS ON
Ten years ago, as our first piece of WIJ research, we simply picked up the phone and asked a few basic questions of every national daily and Sunday newspaper: 'How many women held decision-making positions, how many attended conference, and how many wrote leaders and op ed columns?'
Responses ranged from the slightly suspicious to downright hostile. Several papers (who shall remain nameless) ignored repeated calls or 'forgot' to fill in all the figures. In 1995 there were 2 female editors (both of Sunday papers) out of a total of 20. Less than a quarter of all journalists attending the crucial daily conference were women.
Fast forward to 2005 and we've repeated the research. This time, reactions were enthusiastic, prompt (in some cases within minutes!) and complete. The figures here came in response to phone or email requests, from either from the editors themselves, or a senior member of staff at each newspaper.
And the news is mainly positive - there are more women in a variety of decision making positions than ever before. Still not enough, but it's encouraging progress as we strive towards a more equal balance of female and male talent in the British press.
In celebration of Women In Journalism's tenth year we've compiled a top ten points from our latest research (below) and can reflect with satisfaction that outstanding women are now editing Britain's biggest selling daily tabloid, and arguably the most conservative British Sunday broadsheet.
Click the purple title for the 10 points
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A matter of opinion
There's no shortage of women writing inthe British press, but thier picture bylines say it all. By Barbara Gunnell
The New Statesman should be on
its guard. When the Los Angeles Times turned over some pages
to women writers for a special “gender” issue in February, it started a bitter war
of words that continues to simmer. The opening salvo came from the University of Southern California law professor Susan Estrich who – somewhat perversely – chose the occasion of the all-women special to attack the LA Times for using too few women in its comment pages. She was particularly put out that one of the contributors to the special issue suggested that since the death of Susan Sontag there had been a shortage of female intellectuals.
Professor Estrich sounds like one of those brawlers and barrackers you never want on your side in a public debate. She certainly dragged her own cause through the grime when she suggested that the LA Times comment editor’s failure to publish more female opinion regularly could be the result of illness affecting his brain
(he has Parkinson’s disease). Such unsubtle reasoning was never going to win her
a permanent column in the LA Times, and it scuppered support for her basic concern that women were under-represented in the American press. None the less, her case does have merit and, as with so many US quarrels, the debate will doubtless soon find its way across the Atlantic.
Estrich laments that only about 10 per cent of bylines in the comment sections of the serious US press are women’s. A more precise count made by a journalist suggested it was a little more. He found that, in the first nine weeks of the year, 20 per cent of LA Times commentators were women; for the New York Times it was 17 per cent; and 10 per cent for the Washington Post.
But even these figures leave cause for concern. Such ratios suggest that decades of equality awareness and anti-discrimination laws have had little impact on a crucial area of American civil society.
Do women not have as many opinions
as men? Aren’t they entitled to have their views heard equally? And if women have a lesser voice in the national press, how will women’s opinions get equally aired in wider debates about public policy?
These questions should concern us in Britain, too.
The British press is differently structured – it is more diverse but more centralised – and maybe has a broader notion of comment (our sections include countryside diaries and faith columns, profiles, gossip columns and humour). On first glance, however, there seems to
be a fair number of female regular columnists and contributors. A survey of my own recycling box reveals that, over the “serious” titles (excluding the Financial Times), no single issue of a newspaper had as little as 10 per cent women commenting. Most days for most titles, the percentage was higher than 20, with some titles on some days yielding highs of 40 per cent of all commentary from women.
But my byline counting led me to a quite separate concern. It is clear to me that, in the British papers at least, the issue is not simply one of headcounts. The difference between an Adam Smith and an Eve Jones is far greater than their gender-specific names. Their picture bylines tell it all.
Adam will look aged between 40 and 70, and can be as gaunt or chubby as he likes. He may or may not have teeth or hair. He may choose to look stern or wise. In short, he is his own take-me-or-leave-me self, there to inform and argue his case. Eve,
on the other hand, is there to please. She will more often than not look like Smith’s daughter, and she is usually glamorous or pretty, with expensive hair and a beguiling manner that promises not to give the male reader a hard time. The pictures of Eve and her sisters seldom make any attempt to convey authority or gravitas.
Thus, our male columnists brim with expertise – the sort of chaps who will give us the back story on the size of Gordon Brown’s black hole (or at least reliable advice on wine vintages) – while Eve
and her sisters tell us about ourselves and the dilemmas of modern living. You simply do not expect these well-mannered looking young women to go thumping tubs or upsetting politicians. And by and large they don’t.
This is not to deny that many female columnists confound this stereotype. Polly Toynbee, Mary Riddell, Mary Ann Sieghart and Anne McElvoy, to name
but four, earn their places at the very apex of the commentariat triangle. Nor would I wish to express anything other than
pure envy for the fabulous writing skills
of young columnists who have made a 21st-century art form out of observing and dissecting the vagaries of modern life, particularly life as experienced by women.
But how has it come about that, so very implausibly, most female columnists
are young and attractive but most male columnists are not?
Where are the female counterparts of all those fiftysomething or even sixtysomething men who still occupy so many column inches of commentary space? Did the young female journalists of two decades ago leave to have children and simply never return? Are they writing books? And what will happen to their counterparts today?
When we see the byline picture of a
rosy-cheeked woman with white hair
and a couple of chins rather like – but
let’s not name names – a certain respected political columnist, say, then women really will have made progress. We might even eventually start to see a new generation of Susan Sontags.
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Sex or politics?
No contest
by Tina Weaver
It’s Saturday afternoon, just two weeks before the general election in the newsroom of the Sunday Mirror, and you’re faced with a front-page dilemma.
You’ve got a strong exclusive line out of an interview with the Prime Minister, together with a shock poll result seeing the Tories almost on level pegging (OK, we are talking hypothetically). You’ve also got a romping, juicy read, a new sex scandal involving a married Premiership footballer, with the voluptuous lady in question photographed draped across a sun lounger. What should you do? I’m afraid there’s no contest. It’s the sex scandal.
While Westminster village explodes in
a froth of excitement, the public at large remains relatively unmoved by the election. In fact, a political story on the front page would be nigh on commercial suicide – unless, of course, we’re looking at the shenanigans of cabinet ministers and love children, but even David Blunkett’s recent turmoils were the kiss of death for sales.
The compromise in the circumstances above would be the PM beaming out of a “box” by the masthead, peering over the picture of “footballer’s beauty”.
It’s not a question of dumbing down, but commercial realism. Such political fatigue is not restricted to newspapers: Labour knows its greatest opponent in this election is apathy. Readers are tired of pledges and don’t believe them even when they’re true. The female voter, in particular, who is more judgemental (especially over the war), is definitely disillusioned.
So what will we do over the next five weeks? Even though a political front page turns readers off on a Sunday, they are unforgiving if there isn’t thorough coverage inside. It has to be lively, imaginative, and have conviction and passion, but we need that to come from the government.
We can guarantee John Prescott will lend some excitement, like his Rhyl punch-up of 2001, but we need to excite through
politics, too. That means having real people put our leaders on the spot in good open debate. It means ministers abandoning some of the patronising platitudes and being honest about what hasn’t worked.
It’s a shame Blunkett is not at the forefront, as he’s always good copy, as is John Reid. Hopefully Geoff Hoon will be kept locked in the MoD as a prisoner of his own inept arrogance. Gordon Brown commands respect and should be at the front of campaigning, rather than guarded and played down as fiercely as he is by No 10.
Before Howard Flight pricked the Tories’ bubble, Michael Howard may have sent a confidence shudder through the Labour echelons. But women are not fooled by his stomach-churning, happy-family photo opportunities.
Yes, the Sunday Mirror will be backing Labour, but we want passion and excitement in our election coverage, and we have to see that from Downing Street.
Tina Weaver is editor of the
Sunday Mirror
This article appears in the New Stateswoman, a special pre-election issue of the New Statesman published this week (01/04/05)
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WIJ COMMITTEE MEMBER Angela Neustatter
Angela Neustatter has been made editor of the young people's psychology
publication Young Minds Magazine. An area that she has long written
about - her last book was Locked In - Locked Out. The Experience of
Young People in Prison and Out of Society - and she feels that being
the daughter of a psychiatrist means "I was soaked in psycho-think
while my mind was still young." But more significantly she says:"At
last the issues around the psychology and mental health of young people
have become newsworthy and what could be more important than trying to
ensure that the next generation feels good about itself and is able to
function well and happily."
Angela, mother of two sons, will combine this with her more general
freelance work.
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Super membership offers
WIJ members are entitled to discount membership of the London Press Club and the Royal Commonwealth Society
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Glossary of Web Terms
The New Media seminar which took place in June and marked the launch of the new website attracted over 50 guests. The evening sparked plenty of lively discussion and networking with all the panellists providing many useful tips and advice for our members.
Rebecca Woodward, Head of New Media and Syndication, BBC Magazines has kindly put together a glossary which members might find helpful to pick their way through new Internet jargon
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Beyond Baked Beans
If you remember student food with horror rather than nostalgia or have about-to-be student offspring of your own you may be relieved to hear about WIJ founder member Fiona Beckett's new book Beyond Baked Beans, out this autumn.
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