This whole Estrich vs. Kinsley dustup regarding the dearth of women on America's op-ed pages (and in the top tier of the blogosphere) strikes me as mostly a case of white people yelling at white people (not that I mind seeing white people yell at each other). It's an important topic, but it invariably involves successful white feminists cracking on their successful white male counterparts, without ultimately changing things for the truly beleaguered caste in the wonderful world of newspaper and other opinion-dom: new writers (male, female, minority or otherwise). First,the back story: As Howard Kurtz points out in his WaPo column today, since Estrich let loose on the L.A. Times editor (and former Slate honcho), not only for not publishing more women, but also for having depleted mental faculties due to Parkinson's disease (low blow, Estrich, you really have learned something from Hannity...) the various MSM papers have been back-and-forthing over why more women aren't breaking into the punditocracy. The bloggers have joined in, with Newsweek columnist Steven Levy duking it out with Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis, who took Levy to the mat over the issue of whiteness itself after Levy tried to explain the gender imbalance as a case of "white men (bloggers) linking to other white men." Jarvis: "First, what's wrong with being a white male? I'm white and male. Not much I can do about it. Not much I want to do about it. I'm sure as hell not going to apologize for it. I'm white. I'm male. I blog. You got a problem with that? Tough. (WaPo has more of the post, or you can get it at Buzzmachine) Skipping a few here... Fifth, don't judge the blogosphere only by 100 blogs on top of some list. That's so old media. There are eight million blogs -- and 7,999,900 of them that get more traffic and more links and more interest than those mere 100. Judge their diversity. Sixth, so if there aren't enough unwhite and unmale bloggers blogging, am I supposed to stop? Is it my fault? No, it's not. My friends Halley and Rebecca are white, too. Should they do anything differently? I certainly hope not. Seventh, see the post below about Hillary Clinton and Condi Rice. Welcome to the post-post-feminist era, folks.
Jarvis kicked it up a notch in a later post, after one respondent played the Larry Summers card... There are tons of comments on the post below (naturally; isn't that why Steven Levy chose this topic)? This one really irked me: "And sorry but I don't agree with Jeff Jarvis' rant about "so what if I'm a white male blogger." That's akin to saying, "So what if Harvard president Larry Summers says something derogatory about women's innate abilities in math and science... he's just trying to be provocative." Summers' comments do matter. They reveal his prejudices and his point of view. And he's in a unique policy-making position. And, yes, I'm a Harvard grad of the female persuasion. Eegads, did I really say that on my blog? Well what the heck... it's true. Now link to me, dammit!" Well, damnit, don't you see that by lumping me in with Summers you are doing to me exactly what Summers is doing to you: You are making assumptions about me just because of my gender and race. You go after Summers because of what he says.
You go after me because of what I am. If that's not a case of white female bigotry, it is at least a case of hypocrisy and sloppy thinking. Harvard, eh?
Hm... another female Harvard blogger... have to say I'm with Jarvis on this one, and as an alum, I think Summers is getting a raw deal -- aren't universities supposed to be marketplaces for ideas, or are they just really expensive sensitivity training schools? But I digress: The whole thing boils down to this: the mainstream media is overwhelmingly male and white. The "new media" is mostly male and white. Ditto the blogs, editorial boards, boards of directors, shareholders, management and all top guns. And not just in media, but in corporate America too. Newsflash: America is mostly white (about 80 percent), and men mostly run it. Tell me something I didn't know. Take it from me, the opinion business is tough. In the market where I live, there are two major papers, both of which I have been published in (as a freelance columnist or as a one-off on the op-ed page), but neither of which has the budget, or indeed the inclination, to spend money bringing on a new opinion writer. On the rare occasion when the majors do add a column, it invariably goes to a geriatric white man (not that there's anything wrong with being a geriatric white man -- some of the best writers are, including one at the television station I used to work for whom I consider one of my best mentors). But why the advantage? First, I think there is something to the conceit that editorial page editors value "experience," and feel that long-time reporters, rather than young whippersnappers like myself, have more of it on offer, and that makes their opinion columns more valuable than those of a newbie. The built-in advantage there goes to white men, who have been in the game longer and therefore have risen more steadily. Then there is that budget thing -- the opinion page might be the hardest part of the newspaper to crack, and budget is at least a major factor in keeping outsider writers (which often means women and minorities) off the page. Space is another factor: there's just so much real estate on the op-ed page, and with newspapers increasingly relying on syndicated material, there's not much space left for local or new writers. And then I think there is a touch of clubbiness to the opinion game. Each publication, whether print or online, has its pet writers, and they mostly come from the editors' own circle. Just trying getting something published in Slate or Salon, or even worse, the Nation, where liberal clubbiness is run-amok. Surprise-surprise, the vast majority of the writers pubbed in the liberal mag world are white, too. (I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Juliane Malveaux about this a year ago for a column, and she pointed out that in general liberal intellectuals would much rather mother minorities than actually deal with them...) In many of these cases, the gate keepers are often white women (Salon, The Nation,) and the people most often locked out are not other women, but minority writers. But that's not a neat way out either. With so many publications, niche and otherwise out there, there is always a chance to find your voice. Blogs are the biggest example of that, though the difficulty of cracking the top tier does rankle the nerves (and let's face it, most bloggers have bloody raw nerves). But here, I think the issue isn't so much "exclusionary white men" as it is that same clubbiness that infects the print and online mag world. Bloggers are a clique, and just like life, college or whatever, cliques tend to be homogeneous. Some stats for the nerdy: In the United States, an analysis of the evening news programs in 2002 showed an average percentage of 14 percent female protagonists, compared to 86 percent males. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice led the top 10 with 45 appearances, followed by Senator Hillary Clinton (27) and the First Lady, Laura Bush (20). (Sheila Gibbons, Media Report To Women) [Women's Human Rights Net, 2003] ---with shout-outs to Jarvis on the post-post-feminist era Hillary/Condi catch... Of those studied, women were 16 percent of presidents /CEOs in broadcast television and cable companies and 18 percent of presidents/CEOs in publishing companies. [Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
(2003) via International Women's Media Foundation]
On female columnists specifically, courtesy of E&P: The percentage of female opinion columnists on major-syndicate rosters has risen very slightly since 1999, according to an E&P study. E&P looked at the Web sites of eight major distributors, and found that 33 of 135 opinion writers -- 24.4% -- are women. When we previously studied the numbers nearly six years ago, 23.7% of these writers were women (E&P magazine, Aug. 21, 1999). Growth has obviously slowed, because the 23.7% figure from 1999 rose nearly nine percentage points from 1989 -- when 14.8% of op-ed columnists were female.
No numbers from E&P on minority columnists (sigh.) Anyway, for the truly number-needy, here are some stats from the American Society of Newspapers 2004 survey (about newsrooms, not op-ed pages...) Supervisors: Minorities account for 10.5 percent of all supervisors in newsrooms. Twenty percent of all minorities were supervisors, a slight increase from last year. Newspapers with no minorities: The number of newspapers responding to the survey with no minorities remained the same at 373. That means that 60 percent of daily newspapers responding to the survey had minority staffers. The majority of these newspapers have circulations of 10,000 or less and serve small communities. Nearly two-thirds of all minority journalists work at papers with circulations exceeding 100,000. Staff size: The number of full-time professionals working in newsrooms continues to drop. Newsrooms have lost an estimated 2,000 full-time professionals since the year 2000 largely through the loss of white men. Where do minorities work: The percentage of minorities working at the country’s largest newspapers, those exceeding 500,000 circulation, has remained virtually unchanged since 2000 and now stands at 18.7. Meanwhile the percentage of minorities working at newspapers from 250,0001 to 500,000 has grown from 18.3 percent to 20.6 and those at newspapers from 100,001 to 250,000 has grown from13.6 to 15.3. Other findings: Internships: The number of minority interns increased to 852 raising the percentage to 32.2 percent up from 30.6 percent. Women: The percentage of women in daily newsrooms increased slightly to 37.23 percent after a two-year decline. The number of white women declined by a net of 72 and the number of minority women increased by a net of 80. Minority women make up 16.27 percent of the women professionals in newsrooms up from 15.8 percent last year. Men: Daily newspapers staffs are still largely male. Men now total 34,017 a net decrease of 533 from last year. Minority men number 3,733 up from 3,652 last year. Job categories: 65.8 percent of all supervisors are men. They are also 58.6 percent of all copy editors, 60.4 percent of reporters and 73.9 percent of photographers.
We can do these statistics to death. Does it mean things are getting better? Worse? And who's worse off, white women or minorities (I'd bet on the latter). And most importantly, is there anything, short of slapping a quota on the op-ed pages and on the blogosphere (which would truly ruin the whole point), that we can do about it? And what's the most likely outcome of the Estrich debacle, do you think? I'll wager more columns for Estrich and other established white female writers, a good week's discussion (plus a nice play for Wonkette), and not much else. |
