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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
alas, I don't know from marketing.
I mean "allow" in a practical, journalistic sense. We always have and will continue to have plenty of "gurls news," as you put it. I write a lot of it.
What a blog format "allows" us to do is point quickly to a story like the Iceland story, a story we would not have had the resources to report on our own in a timely fashion. Someone else wrote a good story about it. A blog "allows" us to direct readers to that story.
I think our disagreement isn't about the allowing, though. It's about the organizing principle of the blog: women's news. It's that organizing principle that you find flawed and retro that I find progressive and exciting.
If you want to continue the discussion with me please feel free to write directly (rtraister@salon.com). I should also clarify that I have not written any stories about women crying in the office. That was someone else.
I should also clarify that I have not written any stories about women crying in the office
Bugger - my humplest apologies
I think our disagreement isn't about the allowing, though. It's about the organizing principle of the blog: women's news. It's that organizing principle that you find flawed and retro that I find progressive and exciting.
Okay, that's great. It's good that you like your blog. Here's my question: does anybody at Salon care in the least that so many of your paying customers DON'T like it? Aren't you here to give us what we want? You people seem to think that you're here to give us what YOU want, which would be fine if I weren't paying Salon for content.
Though perhaps the pink is a bit much, I'm glad to have the Broadsheet to quickly point out news for women. I also enjoy a bit of light commentary sometimes. If people aren't comfortable with that association or style, it's easy not to read. If/when women's news ONLY ends up here I'll be upset. But why should that happen? So far I find more worthwhile content here than in many blogs I've sampled. Thanks, Salon.
You say its news for women, since I'm a man does this mean its not news for me ? I shouldn't be reading it ?
The so-called sustenance that Traister has now placed in front of us? Brooke Shields. Somebody send this back, please.
I'm not suggesting that women's health issues aren't important. I just don't care for celebrity gossip being mistaken for real news. Guess what? These celebrities will do and say anything to keep their names in the news. And articles like Traister's just feed the machine. If I want to read that kind of crap, I'll go watch Traister on VH1, where it belongs.
That said, do I feel bad for Brooke Shields? Yes, but not nearly as bad as I do for the *real* women that struggle through the same thing, except without all the resources that Shields' celebrity can afford her. Should Salon report on issues like this? Yes, of course. But why does Brooke Shields get the starring role? And why must said story be segregated into a horrifically named blog?
The very presence of Broadsheet--like it or not--suggests that these issues aren't being addressed in Salon's main forum: where they should be. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that this is a special area for women's issues and not, by the very same logic, ackowledge that you are *lacking* in substance of those issues in the main part of Salon. My suggestion is not that the intention of Broadsheet is bad, but that it is a quick-fix poorly executed. Don't confuse the mere presence of women and women's issues (what isn't a woman's issue?) as providing a gendered analysis of important news of the day.
I personally don't mind the pink. ;)
Biggest political scandal since Watergate/Lewinsky and there's nothing in Broadsheet on it.
I guess its not news for women, good thing they don't have to worry their cheeky pink heads about it.
I am very much enjoying Broadsheet. I appreciate the tidbits that wouldn't merit a feature, like the Iceland story. I also appreciate the stories, like Suzette Boler's, that manage to touch on very serious themes in our culture (the Iraq war, corporate encroachment into our personal lives, even our cultural respect for marriage) through the prism of an individual. If that's happening in a non-gender-identified blog, great. I happen to be reading this sort of thing in Broadsheet, and liking it.
But please, an end to classist, racist slurs like "redneck," in this and all forums. Please, blackpaw, think how "redneck" sounds to someone from a working-class, rural, white background, especially someone of Scottish descent (those to whom it was originally, and derogatorily, applied). As a mental exercise, replace it with "nigger," "chink," "jap," "wop," or "kike." Edit your subsequent posts as necessary. (And don't even try responding that rural working-class whites, or Scots in any part of the world, have been inadequately discriminated against to merit this consideration.)
You have succeeded in undermining any argument you were attempting to make.
Sorry - I have no idea what you're talking about, haven't seen it used anywhere around the forums/TT - certainly nothing to do with me.
"a working-class, rural, white background, especially someone of Scottish descent"
Oddly enough that is *exactly* my background :)
LH reminded me of my comment "To Nicole D. Yup, you nailed it. Salon is full of rednecks and women in denial who hate any hint of women standing up for themselves" a while back which I had forgotton about.
I'm stunned you failed to notice that was sarcasm - words fail me.
...within the responses to the discussions of Broadsheet both here and in TableTalk from Salon insiders (such as Joan Walsh, Farhad Manjoo, and Rebecca Traister, bless her, who is trying). It goes something like this: "I'm hearing a lot of complaining about the pink but no actual discussion of the content itself".
It's an accusation which makes it extremely easy to dismiss the volume of discontented posts as having no substanative value, and therefore being unworthy of actual action.
And yet I have read literally dozens of posts that specifically tackle content (and some nothing but content). What people are saying, if I dare condense and paraphrase the comments of such a diverse and smart group of people, is this:
The stories chosen for "Broadsheet" are trite. They're frankly asinine. And they're being intentionally headlined and presented to be either titillating in the name of "cheekiness" or - I am increasingly suspecting - to mock the "humorless feminists" who Salon suspects must make up the majority of Broadsheet-haters.
"Broadsheet vs. Cockpit"
"Pussy saves broad!"
"The trouble with Harry" (That's Harriet Miers, Supreme Court Nominee, if you were unsure. I was.)
I actually like the idea of a women's blog. (Is "Women who Think" too entirely obvious and inoffensive for everyone to have thought of?) The way Salon has handled this ill-bred version - first not thinking through what its legions of intelligent, curious, politically-savvy female readers would want - no, demand - in such a feature, and then pretending we are not addressing the content and are fixated on the pink color, or (as Ms. Walsh continues to do) scolding us for 'not getting it' shows a distinct lack of respect - and that, folks, is the one thing up with which the modern North America woman will not put.
Ronnie
(In passing, let me add that I am floored that there is still anyone left who does not know the cultural and political significance with which the color pink is imbued with reference to gender. I don't expect them to teach it in high school but I'd expect journalists writing about women's issues to, well, 'get it'.)
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"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
