Breakfast at Attitash
By Vijaysree Venkatraman
Is it possible for a person to feast at two tables at the exact same time? The answer is no, and as a science writer I can name the law which makes it impossible for us to be in two places simultaneously – “Pauli’s Exclusion Principle.” But knowing this didn’t keep me from trying to partake of both breakfast events on Sunday: “The Op-Ed Project,” and “Non-profits in Journalism.”
Author Catherine Orenstein, founder of The Op-Ed Project, has launched the initiative to train women experts to project their voices on the op-ed pages of major newspapers and online publications. In fact, 'op-ed’ is shorthand for the most powerful form and channel we have to communicate ideas about the world and our role in it, she says. Policymakers read these pages regularly, and op-eds feed other media. Women who want to be part of the decision-making process on important issues must be able to produce well-reasoned essays -- of 750 words or less -- on topics close to their heart.
“We need to be speaking up more,” Orenstein says. In the first five months of 2008, she adds, 90 percent of unsolicited submissions to the Washington Post op-ed page came from men. Is it any wonder then that 88 percent of the paper’s op-eds had male bylines? In areas of specialized knowledge and expertise, the problem seems even worse, she says. One recent study showed that nearly all academics who publish op-eds in the Wall Street Journal are men. In what is supposed to be a representative democracy, asks Orenstein, isn't that figure extraordinary?
Rita Henley Jensen, editor of Women’s eNews, an online publication that covers issues of particular concern to women worldwide, led another breakfast discussion about non-profits in journalism. The mainstream print media’s model of relying on ads to generate revenue can no longer work, she says. Women’s eNews receives monetary support from readers, private donors and publications that use material from the site.
The publication now has an Arabic edition, and Jensen hopes to attract educated women in Middle Eastern countries—who may not work outside their homes—to contribute. Because all eNews is delivered via email, it reaches readers in countries where the government blocks websites about women’s reproductive issues.
Women’s eNews doesn’t have to distribute revenue to shareholders, but it does pay its freelancers, and it’s always looking for new writers!