Be Proactive!

This week an OpEd Project alum, Veronica Arreola, from the summer Chicago session—the next is October 1—showed us all how to be proactive in the world of journalism and achieve what we want. Here is a quote from Veronica herself explaining what she did:

“There has been a recent rash of anti-women’s sports comments in the Chicago Sun-Times. Instead of writing an op-ed or letter to the editor, I asked for a meeting with the paper’s editor and the sports editor. I also asked for an opportunity to submit an op-ed supporting women’s sports. Guess what? The sports editor quickly wrote back and requested a 500-word commentary!”

… that was last Monday. Yesterday, only a week later, her piece ran in the Chicago Sun-Times. Here is the link to the article, entitled “Women’s Sports Deserve a Chance”

Big round of applause for Veronica and her gutsy actions. We can all learn a lot from her refusal to back down and ability to see her piece through to completion!

Byline Blog, June-July, 2011

Hi, it’s social media and byline blog intern Larkin Bailey, writing with the results from the survey I conducted this past month. I am a rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins University, majoring in Political Science and Writing Seminars, born and bred here in New York City.

For the past month I have been documenting eight news outlets—chronicling the number of opeds written each day, recording the number by women on their site, and the topic the women chose to write about. I selected four traditional outlets—The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and four new (online) outlets—Slate, Salon, The Huffington Post, and the Daily Beast.

At the close of my research conducted from June 19 to July 15, I found that the online outlets had a much higher percentage of pieces by women, than did the traditional newspapers. The percentages of women at each source amounted to: NYT (18.49%), WSJ (15.93%), LAT (29.3%), WP (18.10%), Slate (35.7%), Salon (30.1%), HP (29.76%), DB (32.20%). The graph is posted below:

When comparing the data to the survey performed six months ago, it is clear that traditional outlets are performing pretty much the same, some slightly lower. In my research, the LA Times proved to publish significantly more pieces by women, than did any other traditional outlet, which is interesting due to the accusations of sexism they encountered from columnist Susan Estrich a few years ago. Below is the graph made by former intern Gus with the results from her survey conducted from October to December, 2010. Her statistics proved similar to mine—NYT (15%), WP (24%), WSJ (18%), HP (22%), DB (22%), SA (20%):

In addition to the graph documenting the number of women, I made a graph with the percentages of women writing on a chosen eight topics—politics, science/health, business, culture, sports, women, education, the international arena. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming amount of women wrote on the topics of women and “culture,” making up 43.2% of the graph. The next highest category was politics at 29.2%, then the international arena with 12.37%, science/health at 8.52%, business at 4.06%, education at 2%, and finally sports at a staggering 0.6%. The graph with these results is posted below:

It is evident that the traditional outlets publish the least amount of pieces by women, while the online outlets are steadily increasing the number of women’s voices in public conversation.

The OpEd Project meets Ladies DC for a fun, summer happy hour

Last week, The OpEd Project was thrilled to co-sponsor a happy hour with Ladies DC, a 1400+ women’s professional network whose mission is “Women Helping Women.” OEP alums gathered in our nation’s capital–at chic Metro Center bar, FunXion, to be precise–for a summer get-together to network, make new friends, and reconnect with familiar faces. Special thanks to Mentor-Editor and Instructor, Kelly Nuxoll, and the Ladies DC leadership team for making this happen!  –Alyssa Best

 

Alums Pamela O'Leary and Nyasha Junior reconnect from a recent DC seminar (bottom left)

OEP Program Manager Alyssa Best with alums Rebecca Lenn and Andrea Zak

 

Alums Katrina Mathis and Nyasha Junior (right) mix and mingle with Ladies DC members, including Founder Lindsey Mask (left)

 

 

Ladies DC Founder, Lindsey Mask (left), and OEP Program Manager, Alyssa Best, welcome the crowd and share information about upcoming programs