WMC News & Features
Usual Suspects: On Completing the Washington Post’s Next Great American Pundit Contest
The writer made it to the final stages as a contender for coveted space in the pages of one of the nation’s premier newspapers—and learned just how far we are from gaining equal access in public discourse.
WMC News & Features
From Media Blitz to Women’s Conference: Has Maria Shriver Discerned a Watershed Moment?
A Time magazine cover story and a week of programming on NBC immediately followed the release of The Shriver Report. This week, California’s First Lady will use the findings to engage participants in her annual conference on women. If the continuing activity fails to “ignite a national conversation,” it won’t be for lack of planning and effort.
WMC News & Features
“Why Aren’t You Smiling, Honey?”
The media and the blog world have been discussing women’s “happiness” quotient since a headlined Huffington Post item offered cumulated poll data indicating they weren’t. The author, who writes about and speaks to women now in their fifties and sixties, reports that she hears quite a different story.
WMC News & Features
It’s Not a Man’s World or a Woman’s Nation
You’re going to be seeing a multimedia blitz about a new national study of women’s status called The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. Gloria Steinem gives you a preview of this project created by Maria Shriver and a D.C. think tank, and suggests ways you can use it and also judge its success.
WMC News & Features
October 02, 2009 | Marcella Chester |
Arts and culture,
International,
Media,
Violence against women
What Consequences Should Roman Polanski Face After 32 Years?
The author, a rape survivor, takes a clear-eyed view of the Polanski case, sorting out both the needs of his victim and those of a society that cannot afford to tolerate sexual violence.
WMC News & Features
Broadcast News: When Women Become Two out of Three
The author, whose first job after earning her journalism degree was with Katie Couric’s evening news show, argues that both Couric and Diane Sawyer will adjust to a changing TV news scene, one in which the traditional evening broadcasts coexist with interactive new media.
WMC News & Features
Midwest Teen Sex Show: Can Sex Ed Actually Be Entertaining?
As the author reports, the creators of the podcast believe humor and honest information about sex for teens do mix, and programmers at Comedy Central think they may be on to something.
WMC News & Features
Celebrating Women's Media Successes
WMC’s first awards event honored the best work by women in news and entertainment. The recipients, however, cautioned those assembled to pay tribute: many barriers remain.
WMC News & Features
June 04, 2009 | Sarah Seltzer |
Media
Scarborough Country: Where Anti-Choice Extremism Is Swept Under the Rug
The murder of Dr. George Tiller has been the top news story of the week. But as some have noted, the tragedy has gotten scant notice from one MSNBC personality. The author sees the omission as part of a broader sexist pattern.
WMC News & Features
June 03, 2009 | Alida Brill |
Media
On Dr. Tiller’s Death
When right-wing commentators and talk-show guests characterize such good and compassionate men as criminals and worse, can we be surprised at the outcome? The author argues that, to honor George Tiller, we must insist on a public debate that reflects reality and the rule of law.
WMC News & Features
As Secretary of State, Clinton Can Exercise a Range of Roles
In her current job, Hillary Clinton has found the freedom to express herself in various modes that work for her and for the Obama Administration. She is winning the appreciation of the public and of political and media observers.
WMC News & Features
AmazonFAIL: How Online Social Tools Can Wreak Havoc—and Repair It
The author explains what probably happened over the weekend to threaten sales of LGBT and feminist books on Amazon.com—and how social media instantly jumped into the fray.
WMC News & Features
Communicating with Jane Fonda
Not content merely to speak to her Broadway audience eight times a week through a critically acclaimed performance, Jane Fonda is blogging daily and twittering nightly. She finds herself hooked on the instant feedback.
WMC News & Features
Finding a Media Career that Suits Me—Not My Image of Myself
From an early age, the author had a particular kind of career in mind. And, rapidly, she was realizing her dreams working in network television—until she stepped back and took another look at what she wanted in life.
WMC News & Features
The Fox Disconnect
As part of a Women’s Media Center campaign demanding that Bill O’Reilly apologize for his personal, sexist attack on the legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, Courtney Martin, a member of the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices program, appeared on The O’Reilly Factor this week to drive the message home. Here is Martin's account of the experience and its aftermath. (The WMC also received hundreds of hateful, profanity-laced, sometimes threatening emails and calls after calling for O’Reilly’s apology)
WMC News & Features
Changing the World, One Blog at a Time
The author, WMC’s media manager, understood the potential of networking. But the true power of the web for advocacy hit home when an injustice threatened her family. Here she describes how anyone can use the process.
WMC News & Features
Mothers Linked World Wide
They met in Toronto and cemented a movement of mothers that now promises a global network, with a website and a wide-ranging set of objectives. The author helped film a documentary tracing their progress.
WMC News & Features
NBC Looks Backward with “Meet the Press” Pick
Another white male journalist is about to join the TV networks’ Sunday morning lineup—and it’s not as though there were no women, or men of color, to choose from. NBC demonstrates, at the very least, a surprising lack of imagination in this year of diversity.
WMC News & Features
November 24, 2008 | Hamedah Hasan, Melissa Mummert |
Arts and culture,
International,
Media,
Politics
Concrete Bed
As a result of Draconian federal sentencing laws imposed since the 1980s, the author, caught on the edges of her cousin’s cocaine-selling operation, remains locked up despite what her trial judge called her “extraordinary rehabilitation.” While we seek out family during this holiday season, she longs for her three daughters and hopes that a documentary about her case will influence judicial policy makers.
WMC News & Features
What Is the True Story of McCain’s Wartime Experience?
Journalists have had years to vet John McCain’s account of wartime heroism in Vietnam. But no real critique of its veracity has emerged from leading media outlets. Reporters and commentators remain remarkably disinclined to investigate a major underpinning of McCain’s argument that he is qualified to be commander-in-chief. Here, historian Mary Hershberger questions why.
WMC News & Features
The New Media Message For Women
While the old boys’ network continues to dominate mainstream media, women are tending to look elsewhere for their news and information. This year, the blogosphere has emerged as a powerful venue for women’s political activity as well.
WMC News & Features
Speaking of Change: Women Broadcasters Deliver
Two thirds of the way through the male-moderated presidential debates, history has turned in this election when women broadcasters played a role.
WMC News & Features
Keeping Hold of Your Vision—the Making of Hounddog
One of the dirty secrets of the film business is that it takes women directors a long time to get their films made. The Women, which opened recently, took Diane English 14 years to bring to the screen; other examples include Tamara Jenkins award-winning The Savagesand Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, which took 10 years each. Writer/director Deborah Kampmeier joins this illustrious club with her own decade long trek to see her filmHounddog starring Dakota Fanning finally released in theatres.
WMC News & Features
Women Film Critics: An Endangered Species?
Mainstream media paid scant attention to Martha Lauzen's "Thumbs Down: Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers" when the report was published on July 28 by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ), although the posting was supported by simultaneous distribution to 500 entertainment media and movie industry A-listers.
WMC News & Features
August 01, 2008 | Kristal Brent Zook |
Media
Calling All Women and Minority Media Owners (But Not Too Loudly)
“This is a bit more civilized than usual,” one attendee could be heard saying upon entering the auditorium for the Federal Communications Commission event in New York City on Tuesday. Unlike the emotional collection of media activists, protestors, concerned citizens and artists (some of whom directed hisses and sneers at FCC Chair Kevin Martin) who attended any one of the public hearings held by the commission over the past year, this one featured mostly suits and ties, all of whom coolly assembled without fanfare at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.