blogging life

Two of my favorite 23-year-old bloggers, artist/photographer Emma Bernstein and writer Nona Willis-Aronowitz, have made some major changes to their blog of late, and I love what they’ve done with the place. Check it all out, over at GIRLdrive. Here’s what I like about this blog:

It’s a platform for their forthcoming book from Seal.

Their blog’s tagline, “roadtripping america, mapping out feminism,” is a great example of a tagline that nails it.

Their “Mid-Week Memo” feature covers timely topics and interesting projects they’re involved in around issues like women and the arts, mentoring teenage girls, intergenerational conversations, and other juicy tidbits from the feminist frontier.

The press their project has generated.

And, of course, the fact that they profiled my dear friend in Wyoming, Shelby.

Do visit them over at GIRLdrive and see for yourself.

More this morning on last week’s AdAge article by Beth Snyder Bulik, about a new study showing how “mainstream” blogging is now among women. The study was based on surveys of two sample groups which together included several thousand respondents: one composed of participants in the BlogHer community and the other of online women selected to represent the general population of U.S. women. Demographically, BlogHer users are fairly similar to average online women, although they skew much higher in the 25- to 41-year-old Gen X range, with 68% of the BlogHer users in that age range vs. 42% of overall women.

Writes Bulik,

“Blogosphere” may not be a pretty name for it, but it is a pretty attractive destination — for women at least, and maybe for marketers courting them, too. According to a recent study by BlogHer and Compass Partners, more than one-third (35%) of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week. And that number increases if less-frequent visits are factored in. Of those women who are online any amount of time, 53% read blogs, 37% post comments to blogs and 28% write or update blogs, according to the study.

Other tidbits of interest from the study:

-Of the general population of online women who write blogs, 58% post entries at least weekly — and of those who read blogs, 80% do so at least weekly.

-Most women who blog do so for fun (65%); to express themselves (60%); to connect with others (40%); as a personal diary (34%); and to give advice or educate (26%).

-Women read blogs for fun (46%); to get information (41%); stay up to date on family and friends (36%); stay up to date on specific topics (34%); connect with others (28%); and entertainment (26%).

-Some 24% of the women overall watch less TV, as do 43% of BlogHer users; another 25% and 22% of the general consumers read fewer magazines and newspapers, respectively, as do 31% in each category of BlogHer users.

Is this a specialized population that applies to early adapters, or is this study a harbinger of what’s generally to come?

The full report is available for download from Blogher’s site, here.

For a good while now, blogger Melissa Silverstein has been keeping excellent track of women at the movies–as producers, directors, and audiences. And this week over at Women and Hollywood blog, Melissa writes:

Sex and the City took in $5.5 at the box office on Monday making it the best non-holiday Monday of the year after Iron Man. News flash to Hollywood, women do go to the movies during the week.

Will SATC change the way Hollywood looks at the female audience demographic? We shall see.

Quick reminder, for those in the vicinity, or those coming in: I’m offering a 3-hour blogging workshop on Saturday at the National Council for Research on Women’s annual conference, Hitting the Ground Running: Research, Activism, and Leadership for a New Era, on Saturday. The conference froms from June 5-7 at the Kimmel Center at NYU (60 Washington Square South). And for anyone convinced that the blogosphere can be ignored, I urge you to read last week’s article in AdAge on just how mainstream it is–among women.

Developed in tandem with Courtney Martin, who will be out of town for this one, the session will be led with the assistance of Elizabeth Curtis.

You can still register for the NCRW conference, here. And thanks for passing it on to anyone you think might be interested! Description of the session below.

Strategic Blogging for Organizations, Women’s Centers, and Feminist Experts

Author and blogger Deborah Siegel will lead participants through the basics of blogging—both logistical and philosophical. Participants will leave with a sense of the ways in which blogging is changing the media landscape—especially for women!—and tools for how to start one for their organization or improve one that’s already off the ground. Topics will include: young feminism and activism online, reaching the momosphere, and publicizing events and publications through blogs.

Calling all ye changemakers with an idea, an organization, a project, a book, a brand—but no interactive web presence! If this describes you, please read on.

Traveling around, I’ve observed that far too often, otherwise visionary female thinkers can overlook an essential aspect of their work: getting it online and building a virtual community around it. Sometimes the obstacles are generational. Other times, it’s a matter of Technology Overwhelm. But getting more of you to embrace the digital tools that will help you think in public is a mission I feel passionately about. (You can read more about my philosophy and approach at the New York Times, the Women’s Media Center, and in On Campus with Women.)

And so, the consulting team over here at GWP has decided to get concrete by offering some online platform consulting. Here’s the deal: In tailored individual or small group sessions, Girl w/ Pen Consulting demystifies the elements that go into creating a successful individual or organizational presence online. The ideal client for this kind of coaching is a thought leader, author, advocate, philanthropist, or social entrepreneur who is ready to migrate her real-world activities online, expand her reach, connect more directly with a broader audience, and is hungry for hands-on training. Sessions can take place one-on-one or in small groups, depending on clients’ needs.

In today’s crowded marketplace of ideas, an “online platform” is no longer an add-on. It’s a necessity, both virtual and real. Ready to join me?! For more info about how this coaching works, please feel free to email me at girlwpen@gmail.com and I’ll tell you more.

(image cred)

Alissa Quart–who I’m off to meet with this morning–has the cover story of the Columbia Journalism Review this month. (Go Q!) Do check out her piece, “Lost Media, Found Media: Snapshots from the Future of Writing.” A chronic bridger, I think I might actually fall somewhere in between. Alissa interviewed a range of old (lost) and new (found) media types, including feministing’s Jessica Valenti, of whom she writes the following:

The young found media types I spoke with tend to focus more on invention than destruction. They were, for the most part, unflaggingly upbeat. Jessica Valenti, for instance, the twenty-nine-year-old founder and editor in chief of the popular feminist blog Feministing, which aggregates news items ranging from feminist responses to the presidential campaign to condom manufacturers’ responses to a new study of young women and STDs. The news hits are all interspersed with tart, partisan, intelligent, and sometimes raw commentary and opinion. Whatever Feministing is—blog, think tank, digest, “women’s” pages, feminist magazine—it’s a fine example of the new media as an improvement over the old. Unlike the “Hers” sections of yore—women’s magazines, or even Ms. Magazine—Feministing is not shaped by the fear of being offensive or “unrelatable” for “the average female reader.” In this way, like some other feminist blogs, it is head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media. “I don’t see a lot of nostalgia from young feminists for the time when things were a lot worse,” said Valenti, who is tall with black Veronica bangs, and speaks a decibel or two louder than you do. “I studied journalism a bit but I didn’t find my voice until I had a completely open forum in the blogs.”

Like Valenti, my younger journalist friends and colleagues imagine a kaleidoscopic future where the hoarier codes of journalism are put to rest: goodbye inverted pyramid, hello a nearly reckless immediacy; goodbye measured commentary, hello pungent or radical or vulgar commentary. Yet beyond style, the new reality is that there is no clear, long-term career plan for Found Media-ites—or even for most of the rest of us. We’re in the sort of moment in history that some people will say they were glad to witness, but only twenty years hence.

Read the full article here.

Strategic Blogging for Organizations, Women’s Research Centers, and Feminist Experts

JUNE 7 (time TBD)
Kimmel Center / New York University

Sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women, this session will take place during the Council’s annual conference this year (June 5-7).

In this 3-hour intensive, I’ll lead participants through the basics of blogging—both logistical and philosophical. Participants will leave with a sense of the ways in which blogging is changing the media landscape—especially for women!—and tools for starting one for your organization or improving one that’s already off the ground. Topics will include: young feminism and activism online, the momosphere, possibilities for personal voice, and how to publicize events and publications through blogs.

There is no separate registration required for the workshop. To register for the conference, click here. Questions? Please don’t hesitate to email me at girlwpen@gmail.com.

[Shameless self-promotion alert begins]
“I had just started my own blog when I attended Deborah’s workshop. Deborah opened my eyes to the vast world of feminist bloggers and got me excited about the number and kinds of people I could reach. She also exposed me to options – and vocabulary – that I just didn’t have. Blog carnivals? Springwidgets? A feminist bloggers conference? Who knew? Not me! Not until Deborah’s workshop, packed with inspiration and instruction.”
– Nancy D. Polikoff, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University
[Shamelessness alert ends]

The devastation in Myanmar and China has been so overwhelming as to render me silent on it all. But this morning I caught a segment on the news, and later read in the paper, about all the Chinese parents who have lost their only child. And I lost it.

There’s a Bloggers Unite for Human Rights challenge going on today and so here I am, still wordless, carrying unspeakable grief in my heart all the while knowing it’s nothing compared to what the victims of the cyclone and the earthquake are feeling on the other side of the world.

Amnesty International has posted links to a number of their campaigns–ways to get involved in human rights and aid efforts around the globe. And here is a link to the Red Cross’ donate page.

But here’s my lingering question for this day, and I know I have much to learn from others on this front: When devastation is so emotionally overwhelming that your impulse is to turn away, what can you do in that moment, really do, to stay human and not just let yourself turn away?

From time to time, I offer a snapshot of a new blogger on the block. Here I offer a quick Q&A with PursePundit, who started blogging in January of this year. Offline, PursePundit goes by the name of Jacki Zehner, and was the youngest woman and first female trader invited into the partnership of Goldman Sachs. She left in 2002. Now an impassioned philanthropic visionary and social change activist committed to the economic empowerment of women, Jacki is becoming a frequent media commentator on women’s success in the workplace, investing, current market events, women and wealth, and high-impact philanthropy. Here we go!

DS: What made you decide to start a blog?

JZ: I’ve been writing forever, but my work has generally been buried in my journals. Recently I read The Artist’s Way which suggested that the way to unleash your creativity is to commit to writing every day and I am trying to do that. Most of the time what I write about is people I’ve met with, or opportunities I’ve heard about, or what is going on in the markets, so I thought, why not share it? I’m also very interested in writing a book, and want to get myself out there as a writer. The blog is a place to start.

DS: I see you started by blogging about the markets—why start there?

JZ: What’s going on in the credit markets is unprecedented. As an ex-mortgage trader and an investor, I’ve been following the markets with great interest and I feel compelled to write about what’s happening. Given my experience, I feel I have a credible voice and want to share what I think, like I used to do with my clients.

DS: Tell us something about the blog’s name, “Purse Pundit.”

JZ: I love the whole idea of a purse as a symbol for the economic power of women and I believe that positive change will happen when women really start to use that power. Money is a tool that we have to shape the world that we live in—by how we invest it, by how we spend it, by how we give it away.

DS: Your tagline is “Musings on Money, Markets, and Changing the World.” Do these things really go together?

JZ: My goal with this blog is to expand the dialogue that women are engaging in about money, and inspiring them to use their money in smart and meaningful ways. Women account for more than 50% of all stock ownership in the U.S and we do most of the consumer spending. By 2010, women will account for half of the private wealth in the country, or about $14 trillion. There’s a lot of power in our collective purses.

After doing this Q&A with Jacki, I went and bought a new purse. For more musings from PP, visit www.pursepundit.blogspot.com. You can also now find Jacki blogging over at 85 Broads and Huffington Post.

The next in our lineup of new monthly guest bloggers will be Courtney Martin, with a column that extends on the theme of “Making It Pop”. Courtney will be sharing tricks of the trade and inside scoop on writing in ways that will help you reach the next generation. So stay tuned!