The OpEd Project’s First Ever Follow-up Workshop in NYC

The fabulous Katherine Lanpher has been working with an amazing group of OpEd Project experts to draft, refine and pitch their op-eds (not to mention have a great time–which, believe me, they do: I can hear them laughing through the walls every Wednesday night!).

They just had their third of four sessions last night and all have great pieces in the pipeline. We can’t wait to see them all published!

OEP OpEd Project Members Prepare for Their Brain-Trust Session with Mentor-Editor Katherine Lanpher

Good week for the NYT and Salon, bad week for the WaPo

Last week was a pretty fantastic week for the NYT, in that almost every day there was at least one female op-ed contributor.  Although this doesn’t nudge their percentages as much as I had hoped, it was striking to me, counting the op-eds, and hopefully to everyone else reading the opinion page.  Salon, also, deserves some major kudos – although they don’t publish a lot of guest writers, this week was extremely notable because over half over of their guests were women.  Yes.  Over half!

As always a little shout-out to the women who were published in the NYT this week: writer Manjushree Thapa had a great piece about the seemingly never-ending wait for the nationwide Nepalese strike to cease; Ann Patchett had a lovely, lyrical article about floods, and how they differ in our cultural consciousness from other natural disasters; Olivia Judson had some fascinating thoughts about medical rituals, and Lisa Margonelli wrote on the oil spill.

I don’t know what was going on in Washington, though – there were only two op-eds by women.  Let’s step it up, WaPo!

NYT  WaPo  WSJ  HuffPo  LA Times  Salon  Slate

% by women    31      14     10     28        20         57       23

% by men         69     86     90     72        80         43       77

Things are winding down at the college newspapers, where the school years are ending; the Yale Daily News has stopped printing until August, the Prince is only publishing an issue every other day, but the Daily Texan is still chugging along.  Here are the numbers:

Daily Prince                 YDN                    Daily Texan

% by women       50                           0                        38

% by men            50                          0                         62

Where We’ve Been This Month….

This past month we worked chiefly on the east coast, holding seminars, activities and happy hours in New Haven, Washington D.C. and  New York City. Big thanks to Katherine Lanpher, who led Yale and NYC seminars alongside founder Katie Orenstein, and to Alyssa Best and Kelly Nuxoll who made possible the OEP adventure in Washington D.C.

Here at OEP headquarters we’re kicking off a four-week evening workshop with Katherine Lanpher on Op-Eds and speaking your mind (preparations for tonight’s initial workshop are being made as I type!) and planning to bring a bevy of seminars and happy hours to the west coast and Denver (they’ll hopefully be taking place on the 8th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 16th, and 17th). Thanks to Mentor-Editors, alums, and new participants who showed up for the fun during April, we hope to see you even more in May!

Washington D.C. seminar group photo

D.C. Happy Hour

Congrats to recent D.C. alum Nina Godiwalla, referred by Mentor-Editor Reshma Kapadia, on her forthcoming book “Suits: a Woman on Wallstreet”!

New York City seminar group photo

Mentor-Editors Jessica Seigel and Vibhuti Patel at the NYC happy hour

OEP alum sharing thoughts over drinks at the NYC happy hour

OEP alum Ann Lee and Mentor-Editor Michael Massing at the NYC happy hour

Katie and alum Jennifer Seide at the NYC happy hour (a big thanks to Maura McGreevy for sending Jennifer our way!)

Courtney Lobel, Amy Finnegan and Danielle Grace Warren at NYC happy hour

Something has OEP alum Gwen highly animated at the NYC happy hour

Mentor-Editor Vibhuti Patel and OEP seminar leader Kathern Lanpher engaged in a deep discussion at the NYC happy hour

OEP alum Jennifer and Katie enjoy the company of some taxidermied friends in the lobby of the ACE Hotel at the NYC happy hour

Byline blog, week 9

As we move into May, and the third month of my diligent byline-tracking, we have some mixed results from last week’s byline count.  First of all, some massive kudos to Caitlin Borgmann, whose fantastic LA Times op-ed from April 25 was cited in Charles’ Blow’s column in the NYT on Saturday.  Borgmann’s piece dealt with the apparent hypocrisy of Nebraska’s new fetal pain legislation; as she points out, “abortion legislation today commonly masquerades as something much smaller than a call to ban all abortions,” and this law seems to be no exception.  Blow mentions Borgmann’s op-ed at the very beginning of his column, pointing out Nebraska as one of the “rash” of states that has recently sought to limit abortion access.

The rest of the numbers show small fluctuations, but no real changes in trends – in most mainstream publications, women’s voices seem to comprise between 20 and 30% of op-eds:

NYT  WaPo  WSJ  HuffPo  LA Times  Salon  Slate

% by women    29      22      17      19       21        13       28

% by men         71       78     83     81      79       87       78

Yesterday, though, was a great day for the LA Times; 3 of the 4 op-eds published in its opinion section were by women (Charlotte Allen on undermining the Catholic Church, Sonia Shah on productive ways to combat diseases of the poor in developing countries, and Judith Shulevitz on the need to honor the sabbath).

The college newspapers were a little more sporadic, mostly because our school years are winding down and newspapers don’t publish as regularly.  But all of the op-eds printed in the Yale Daily News over the past week (admittedly, there were three) were by women, and the Daily Texan ran several fantastic op-eds on campus sexism and the need for sex education:

Daily Prince                 YDN                    Daily Texan

% by women       9                           100                        33

% by men            91                          0                         67