Monday, March 21, 2005

DEBRA SAUNDERS CHIMES IN... KABOOM! WHACK! BAMM!

Debra Saunders chimes in a recent debate started by syndicated Columnist, Susan Estrich, and delivers some great blows. Great piece:

LUCKY ME. No one can accuse me of being a token female columnist, because I'm the only full-time columnist writing for this opinion page. (Editorial writer Ken Garcia writes a weekly column.)

Last month, when syndicated columnist Susan Estrich went public with her feud with Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Editor Michael Kinsley for not running enough columns by women and local writers, she put the gender card back on the table.

Credit Estrich for getting the pack journalists to find a big story in a phenomenon any rube can see. Stop the presses: Most opinion writers are men.

It doesn't help Estrich that the Los Angeles Times is not the worst offender. In the first nine weeks of 2005, the L.A. Times reported, 20 percent of its op-ed pieces were written by women, while just 17 percent were at the New York Times and a mere 10 percent at the Washington Post. Editor & Publisher, the news industry's trade magazine, looked at eight news syndicates and found that 24 percent of their opinion writers are women.

It also doesn't help Estrich that she went ballistic on this issue after the L.A. Times ran a piece written by a woman -- Charlotte Allen of the conservative Independent Women's Forum.
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Estrich may say she wants to promote diversity of opinion as well as gender diversity, but I've been watching the diversity game for some years. In journalism, diversity is a club the left uses to increase the hiring of lefties. Feminists say they want more female columnists when what they really want are only more liberal female columnists. Or, in their lingo, they want "authentic" women.
.....
Recently a Bay Area journalism professor actually told me that conservatives shouldn't be journalists because conservatives are less likely to question the status quo. I disagreed with his definition, but I responded that this region is filled with liberals, so if you want reporters who will question the status quo, you should push Bay Area media to hire more conservatives. To this, he said nothing, and then left the room. There went his noble reason for muzzling the opposition.

The other question I hear is: How do I survive at The Chronicle? And that question has nothing to do with the fact that I am a woman.
(full article)

MORE INFO on the debate here.

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