25 October 2005 - 5:27pm
Launching a blog of, by and for women is bad for women!
That, I'm told, in an email from Jessica forwarded to me by Amanda, is the gist of comments on Salon's new Broadsheet.
It all seems a bit silly to me, the accusation that this new blog ghettoizes women's issues. Launch a blog where women speak: bad for women? The converse is to shut down women's blogs in order to stop ghettoizing women's issues. Yeah. That makes sense. (Is that why the Democrats don't speak about progressive values? They don't want to ghettoize them?)
Some of the comments (watch a commercial for free day pass) are priceless:
Tony Apsusa: Salon of all places should have more sense than to divide items along some outdated gender-lines. You have been the example I have pointed people to to show them that all of the US isn't sliding into some kind of mid-19th century paranoia.
If you had only called it "The fluff room" or "Editors waste time too" I could have been able to still cling to that hope.
Talk about outdated gender lines! Why would a women's blog be better called "the fluff room"?
Mary Kathryn: This thing is really horrid, random, arbitrary, and uninteresting, as well as unnecessary. Also not at all funny.
md: This is ridiculously insulting and wrong, and Salon should be ashamed to have ever thought it was a good idea.
I find the very idea that there needs to be a separate space for this sort of thing infuriating. Think the news needs more of a feminist perspective? Great--put it into the articles on the existing Salon pages. Then let those articles sink or swim on their merits, without the cutesy-poo ghettoization.
Douglas Moran: I will only note that I find it particularly ironic that you introduced this as a "need" in the middle of nearly a month's-worth of news that focused almost exclusively on two women (Harriet Miers, of course, and Judy Miller). Whether Broadsheet is a good or bad thing (I think it's not a very good idea; why do you want to ghettoize yourselves?), your timing is absolutely atrocious.
There are plenty of comments about the editorial choices regarding content and design, and that's fair. The site at a glance seems to be on the fluffy side.
But with so many people attacking the idea of a women's blog, often in the name of ghettoization, I suppose we should just shut down here, as should Our Word and feministing -- and Ms. Musings for that matter -- and empower ourselves by silencing ourselves.
media girl also blogs at other places.
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Comments
I suspect that many blogs nowadays are fluffy at first, especially if written by people who have never blogged before. There's some pressure to populate the blog with entries, and if the authors tend to be reporters or columnists who typically write a long piece a couple of times a week, they may feel the need to just get posts up. Broadsheet will likely get better -- there are good reporters working on it.
And I entirely disagree with women on women's issues being ghettoization. It's actually people writing about issues that are important to them and have a direct impact on them. I can write about women's issues all I want -- and many of those issues are important to me, what with the fact that I live on this planet with women, too -- but positive change affects me more on a global level than directly.
Remember the first days of the Huffington Post? Egad!
Hey, I'm honored that you posted *my* comment, out of all the ranting and raving. I have been one of the mildest voices.
Here's the thing: if the editors of Salon wanted more "female oriented" stories, why not just put them up front? Why create a separate blog for them? Why would I look for stories about Harriet Miers in "the ladies' blog," instead of, ya know, on the front page? Are they afraid "the guys" will object? To me, that smacks of self-ghettoization, and just seems weird.
What Broadsheet does doesn't mean sucking content out of the front page or Daou or anywhere else, does it?
Guys have plenty of places where male voices dominate. Why is a place set aside for women's voices so threatening to so many? I'm just curious.
Media girl, yes, it does appear that the content is being left off of Salon's front page section and put under the "Broadsheet" rubric. e.g. a story about Rosa Parks, and a story about Harriet Miers, were under "Broadsheet," but not on the front page.
So the question is, why? If Salon wants to increase the "women's voice" influence, why not just *do it*, rather than shunting it off into a new area? Why is doing that rather than just posting the stories up top a *good* thing? What constitutes a "woman's story," anyway? A story about women? Any woman? So will any story about, say, Hillary Clinton appear there rather than in the top area? Condi Rice? Margaret Thatcher? How are we supposed to guess? And given that the editor-in-chief is a woman, why bother putting in it's own pink area? It seems senseless to me.
There's a big difference to me between a woman starting a blog and focusing on the issues of interest to her, and an existing magazine starting a "blog" to which men and women contribute but into which are shunted "women's stories" that don't end up appearing in the top area. It smacks of, I dunno, segregation to me.
Media girl, here's a perfect counter-example: today's top article on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2128818/nav/tap1/) is clearly a "woman's story;" it's about a study on college-aged women, and the article is written by a woman. But Slate put it as the "above the fold" headliner story on their main page. Why can't Salon do that? Why create a separate area?
It seems to me that, if we want to give women's issues a wider hearing, the thing to do is *not* to shunt them off into their own area; put them right out there, for the love of Pete.
If Broadsheet showed signs of actually seriously considering women's issues, I'd have no problem with it. But with headlines like "Pussy Saves Broad" and locating an article about Rosa Parks there instead of on the front page of the news, I can't take it seriously. It feels too much like the old days of consigning women's news to the style or society section, you know so it won't get in the way of real news.
It's not about the approach of Broadsheet, but the very fact that it exists that has so offended so many.