It’s been a couple of hot weeks for new studies on media ownership, a number of them shedding light on the extreme marginalization of women and people of color in broadcast industries. Two of these were studies that I conducted, one of them jointly. (Click here for a PDF of the media ownership report.)
One […]

By GUEST BLOGGER Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
In a recent style section story “When Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day,” the New York Times reported about the dominance of ultra-sexy Halloween costumes for women. The newspaper’s report confirmed – in perhaps a more highminded way – the trend that Comedy Central’s Carlos Mencia commented upon […]

by Guest Blogger Sarah Werthan Butternwieser

October is a busy month. The falling leaves are all but smothered by inflatable pumpkins, election signs and pink ribbons. Lost in the shuffle is the oh-so-hard to market Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It doesn’t have a theme color (well I think it does but who can remember) and it is all […]

There are a few guilty pleasures I’ll indulge myself in, from time to time. VH1’s plethora of reality shows have been among them. No, that frightening Hulk show holds no interest for me, but when Surreal Life morphed into Surreal Love, I will admit I stayed tuned.
Who could pass up the Flav & Brigitte […]

Some editors at progressive media outlets are actively seeking more women writers. But others seem to be throwing up their hands – even hindering progress through their hostility to being called out.

It’s so rare I get to blog about the good news from above, so when I heard that the Government Accountability Office has found the Dept. of Health and Human Services to be in violation of the law by allowing abstinence-only programs to teach medically inaccurate informtaion, I couldn’t resist.
While, according to the Sexuality Information […]

Domestic violence is the ultimate unseen crime because so much of it takes place in private settings. The Sioux City, Iowa’s KCAU certainly is certainly doing its part to invisibilize the victims. In a story about the sentencing of a man who strangled his pregnant girlfriend because she wouldn’t get an abortion, […]

Recently I wrote an online essay called “What’s the Matter with Nora Ephron’s Neck?” People who read reviews in the New York Times etcetera know that Ephron doesn’t “like” her aging neck or the “wattles” of other women. The media gave her book exceptional attention. (If a man wrote a book describing how […]

I’ve been told that the news reporting about the school massacres in other countries did focus on the fact that the victims were selected on the basis of their sex. This suggests that we could talk about it, too. If we really made an effort. Thanks are due to Bob Herbert for trying.