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Women in journalism: Reading list 6/25/2012

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The Gender Report provides a weekly round-up of links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. The links below are to noteworthy articles on topics related to women in journalism and the media during the past week. Articles included in this feature do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gender Report or its writers. View past week’s round-ups here.

Reading List

–Six Young Female Journalists, One Year Later (Forbes Woman)

–Introducing the FPwomerati (Foreign Policy)

–Top 100 Websites For Women 2012 (Forbes Woman)

–South Africa: Surviving the Trade in the Newsroom As a Woman (AllAfrica)

–Jonah Lehrer’s male arrogance (Salon)

–Managing ed Liz Spayd to exit WashPost (Politico)

–So What Do You Do, Sarah Fenske, Editor-in-Chief of L.A. Weekly? (Mediabistro)

–Q&A with Teresa Rehman (International Women’s Media Foundation)

–Marilyn Thompson named Reuters Washington bureau chief (JimRomenesko.com)

–NBC Prepares to Replace Ann Curry on ‘Today’ (New York Times’ Media Decoder)

We encourage readers to submit suggestions of articles to include in future editions of this feature by sending an email to genderreport[at]gmail.com. For links to articles like these throughout the week, follow @GenderReport on Twitter.

World Cup brings normalcy to women’s sports

Joy BaconLeave a comment
Getty Images (Imae courtesy of http://www.fifa.com)

Despite the United States’ loss in the 2011 Fifa World Cup final to Japan, the tournament as a whole was a boost for the support of female athletes breaking twitter records and stereotypes both here and internationally.

The 1999 first-place finish for the American women is still remembered for Brandi Chastain’s shirtless celebration by many, including some media outlets who used the photo in their coverage of this year’s tournament. But this year’s second-place performance saw the team treated not as trailblazers, but as equals in their own right in a sport who’s women’s teams are often trivialized. The Huffington Post even used the tournament to highlight the role of Title IX in normalizing the access success of female athletes.

As Slate columnist Brian Phillips wrote, “the team managed to capture the nation’s attention without ever having to be a symbol for anything…They weren’t offering a corrective counterexample to the greedy/childish/immoral superstars playing men’s sports. They were just more or less kicking ass, as dramatically and unpredictably as possible.” Post-game coverage from Sports Illustrated.com and others also focused on the women’s performance as athletes, not as role models for their gender. The tournament’s media sponsor was Rogaine. For men.

However, some media coverage still angled to the role of women’s soccer on the international stage. Some fear that the game will start to become more like the men’s tournament, with over-dramatized injuries and theatrics that some say deters from the sport. Others worry that the increased popularity will take away from the diverse styles of play and creative strategies, rather than sheer physicality,  present in this year’s tournament. (Although the U.S. team was noted for being the fittest team in the team’s history.)

The team won’t be able to completely shake off its role-model persona; most local coverage of the tournament focused on young girls idolizing the tournament. But the tournament at least gave these athletes a well-deserved spot in the sports playbooks.

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.