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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Yup, you nailed it. Salon is full of rednecks and women in denial who hate any hint of women standing up for themselves.
Or - perhaps if you actually read the content of the responses minus the filter of your preconceptions you'd realise that the vast majority (if not all) of the respondents are committed feminists (female *and* male) who are disturbed by this seperation of "womens" news from the mainstream, all neatly tied up in a patronising little pink bow.
It doesn't help that the editors have completly failed to respond to this concern, merely mouthing platitudes about empowerment and cheekyness.
One thing that interests me about this thread is that the concern seems to be that we are trivializing women's news.
And yet the bulk of the criticism centers on the color pink. Really? Pink? What about thoughts on the content of the posts?
Have you been reading the Table Talk posts on this topic? If not, I suggest you do. You might also want to join the conversation. There are a lot of people there who are upset about a lot more than the pink.
You (and everyone else) can find it here:
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@.773ad94a/1500
Rebecca - you say you been reading the messages yet choose to concetrate on the pink complaints.
Let me repeat for the millionth time - We don't like the news being segrated into womens and (implictly) mens areas.
The pink colour as irritating as it is to many, is a red herring. The bulk of the concerns is that placing womens news in a seperate area and yes - wrapping it in a pink bow is a message many find offensive.
Salon staff can go on and on about how *everyone* is welcome in broadsheet. The fact of the matter is the majority of people are saying they are *NOT*, and you are not listening.
...with great interest for two days. There too I have found a focus on the pink bow and not much criticism of the actual content of the blog.
And I guess we're all just repeating ourselves now. I do understand the worry about ghettoization, but I don't think Broadsheet segregates news about women, I think it liberates it.
Just because it's about or by a woman doesn't mean it automatically goes in Broadsheet, as today's issue should demonstrate. Harriet Miers was our cover all day. Three movie reviews by Stephanie Zacharek ran, as they always do, in Arts and Entertainment. Broadsheet just has more news in it. And it's not hidden. It's one click away, like any feature story.
Here's what Broadsheet enables us to do: get information about a women's strike in Iceland, a study about the benefits of mammograms, the banning of feminist films in Iran, and Sheryl Swoopes coming out into today's issue of Salon. Any one of these stories may well become a feature in the future -- just as stories that are covered in War Room also get reported and dissected as features in the rest of the magazine. But while we don't have a reporter in Iceland, for instance, to report a full piece about the strike in a timely way, we think it's a story that would interest Salon readers, and now we have a way to point them to it.
We have stated very openly that Broadsheet is for everyone. If your take is that the color pink sends a message that men aren't welcome, does it follow that a column with blue highlights will keep women out? I am worried about the man who does not open a link because it is pink, and I am worried about the men and women who assume that that logic makes any sense at all.
I definitely hear that the people here and at TT don't like the pink, don't like the notion of a separate area with the word "women" attached to it. But to complain simply about the way we've set the table and not the meal we're serving seems to me to be as superficial a gesture as the ones you're telling us we're making. If you hate the actual food, speak up!
Your're just not listening, there's a bubble there I just can't penetrate.
Perhaps if I camped out in the Salon office and cried it would make a difference.
We're just disagreeing.
I just checked in TT and saw the discussion of our combined-strategic-talking-points-united-front stuff and can tell you that that's just not the case. I am not an editor; I'm a writer. I am speaking entirely for myself in these posts. I have not conferred with my colleagues on what to say or how to say it.
I am simply answering your thoughts with thoughts of my own. It seems to me that the frustration (for you) is in the fact that my response is not "You're right!" And perhaps mine with you is that your response is not "You're right!"
But just because neither of us is getting the desired response doesn't mean that there's not a conversation taking place.
I don't know how many ways to tell you that I understand the complaints about the segregation. I do! I do! I write (in part) about women's issues and the feminist movement for a living. I promise I get it; I promise I've thought about it a lot. I just disagree with you about it.
Here's what Broadsheet enables us to do: get information about a women's strike in Iceland ...
In what way was salon unable to perform this before ? I don't recall any "NO GURLS NEWS ALLOWED" sign on salons main pages. Does broadsheet embue staff with mystical reporting abilites they lacked previously ?
You're speaking marketing babble, this is rubbish.
I don't know how many ways to tell you that I understand the complaints about the segregation. I do! I do! I write (in part) about women's issues and the feminist movement for a living. I promise I get it; I promise I've thought about it a lot. I just disagree with you about it.
Thats good to hear, appreciated.
Time for me to chill out for a bit now I think.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
