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‘Can I be your Clark Kent?’ and other stupid comments made to female journalists

The real Clark Kent would never be such a jerk to his female colleagues. Photo Credit: Wikimedia
The real Clark Kent would never be so rude to his female colleagues. Photo Credit: Wikimedia

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the persistant underrepresentation of women in all kinds of journalism. There are myriad reasons why, but a new Tumblr called “Said to Lady Journos” illustrates one part of the problem: Women who ask tough questions tend to bring out some people’s inner jerk.

A sampling of comments on the Tumblr:

“Can I be your Clark Kent?” — said to female reporter at a Republican victory party.

“Well, what about being a publicist? Have you thought about that?” — male reporter giving career advice to a female intern. (This guy may explain statistics like these.)

Here’s one that’s misogynistic and racist:

“Cute little thing, but shouldn’t you be running a 7-11 or something.” — said to a female reporter of Indian descent.

Thanks to Poynter’s Mallary Jean Tenore for pointing out the Tumblr. Her must-read piece includes a fantastic Storify of reactions from Twitter users.

(For the record, most of the people I’ve dealt with as a reporter have been utterly professional, but there have been exceptions — like the cop who once told me I looked like “a kindergarten teacher with a notebook.”)

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Women and #theendofbig

As Andrew Sullivan’s recent solo venture demonstrates, journalists with the right kind of digital street cred can cash in on their individual brands.

Sullivan parted ways with the Daily Beast at the end of last year, launching his political blog behind a metered paywall. The move seems to be paying off. Mashable reports that he’s made more than $600,000 so far, and PaidContent predicts that similar persona-based news organizations might become more common:

There are a number of other bloggers and columnists who could arguably pull off a standalone, Sullivan-style model:New York Times foreign correspondent Nick Kristof, for example, has a huge following through social media like Twitter and Facebook and is a popular author…Other columnists at the NYT and similar mainstream outlets like Tom Friedman or Ezra Klein could probably make a go of it, as could some writers such as Felix Salmon at Reuters.

These guys are great journalists, and it would be interesting to see any one of them launch a solo venture, but why are there no women on this list? Ann Marie Lipinski, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, posed a similar question on Twitter. It led to an insightful exchange with author Nicco Mele:

The End of Big is a soon-to-be-released book by Mele that examines how the social web is shifting power from organizations to individuals. His argument is exciting to anyone who sees the web as a place to cultivate a diverse chorus of voices. But it’s also pretty frightening when we consider that many women trying to make a name for themselves online are as likely to be critiqued on their as looks as they are for their ideas.

Women may also find it harder to build the kind of professional identities suitable for standalone ventures. Last year, just 25 percent of guests on Sunday morning political talk shows were female, according to the latest report by the Women’s Media Center. That same report found that male experts were used as sources far more than their female colleagues, and men continue to write the majority of op-ed pieces.

The above example of Kara Swisher is a good one. She’s the co-executive editor of AllThingsD.com. What other savvy female journalists have the right stuff to strike out on their own?

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Giving the “women’s page” (some) credit

When I still worked for a newspaper, one of my favorite things was digging through the morgue. Each overstuffed filing cabinet held decades of old news, including stories from the paper’s long defunct women’s section.

I often dismissed such stories as misogynistic, old-fashioned fluff — something I’m rethinking after reading this piece in the Columbia Journalism Review. As it turns out, women’s pages have an important — if complicated — place in feminist history.

reserving a separate space for “women’s issues” meant that things like parenting, fashion, and the beginnings of the feminist movement got column inches, the separation also demarcated the women’s page as the site of less newsy content, a “pink ghetto” that still persists.

Women’s sections debuted in American newspapers in the late 1800s, and were often the only place willing to hire female journalists. Although these sections were often devoted to lighter matters like housekeeping, society happenings and fashion, they slowly became an arena for serious topics like birth control and workplace equality.

Most newspapers have turned the women’s pages into style sections, but not, alas,  because the front pages are giving equal space to female voices — even in stories focused on women’s issues.

 

Part of the society page from the Grand Rapids Herald. The woman pictured, Betty Bloomer, is better known a former first lady Betty Ford. Source: WikiMedia Commons
Part of the society page from the Grand Rapids Herald. The woman pictured, Betty Bloomer, is better known a former first lady Betty Ford. Source: WikiMedia Commons