media

Leave it to the savvy ladies over at the Women’s Media Center to spearhead this stellar opportunity:

The Progressive Women’s Voices program builds on the Women’s Media Center’s mission to make women more visible and powerful in the media. Through this program, we will identify, train, support, and promote progressive women to become sought-after media resources and opinion leaders. Progressive Women’s Voices will infuse the media with women experts who are prepared to deliver their message and information through mainstream and non mainstream media platforms, educating the public and working to gender-balance the journalistic lens.

To that end, WMC is seeking participants who represent diverse backgrounds, areas of expertise, and levels of experience to apply for the program, which entails in-person intensive training, 10 weekly issues briefings, ongoing conversation with other participants, a web platform, ongoing WMC strategy and support, mentoring, and 12 Months of Promotion and Pitching.

Read more about it at HuffPo in this post by WMC President, Carol Jenkins, which begins:

Quick: Name five progressive women who you would consider household names in America today.

Can’t do it? Then tell us five progressive women whose voices should be prominent in the national media dialogue, and the Women’s Media Center will help put them there.

Ready to apply, or tap someone who is? Spread the word!

Ok, folks, here’s an award that many journalists I know would be eligible for, so please please send your nominations in! (Self-nomination is totally acceptable.)

Council on Contemporary Families 2007 Media Awards for Outstanding Coverage of Family Issues — CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

CCF announces the opening of nominations for its Sixth Annual Media Awards competition. We honor outstanding journalism that contributes to the public understanding of contemporary family issues, in particular the story behind the story: how diverse families are coping with social and economic change ; what they need to flourish; and how these needs can best be met.

The Council will issue two awards for journalism in text form (print- or web-based) and one for broadcast journalism. The awards will be presented at the 11th Annual CCF Conference on Friday, April 25th in Chicago , Illinois

CCF believes that America needs a balanced national conversation about the cultural, legal, and psychological issues that shape both private life and public policy. Essential partners in this process are the reporters and producers who present complicated family issues in their broader social context.

Criteria: Submissions must draw on traditional journalistic techniques of interview, observation and documentation. Opinion pieces are not eligible. Work must have been published, broadcast, or posted during calendar year 2007. Video and radio submissions must not exceed 30 minutes. Written submissions must not exceed 2000 words; excerpts are acceptable. Single pieces or a series that covers a particular issue over time are eligible.

Deadline for nominations: Friday, February 8, 2008

For more info or to request a submission form, contact applewhite@earthlink.net.

It’s new, it’s smart, it’s Dame! And my gal Courtney has a column in it. That girl just makes me kvell. Check out Courtney’s profile of Ladies Who Launch, and keep an eye out for the paper version of the mag soon. The mag’s tagline? “For Women Who Know Better.” Nice.

Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor at 8pm EST,Courtney Martin will be battling it out with conservative pundit Laura Ingraham over issues of sexual freedom, and more. Courtney, you’re my hero. Hang tough.

Well now this is interesting–and on a continuum, somehow, with the National Organization for Women’s late 1960s protests against sex-segregated help-wanted ads in the New York Times. As Lynn Harris reports over at Broadsheet, my local NOW chapter (NYC-NOW) has scored a homerun with their anti-human trafficking campaign. Specifically, New York magazine announced this week that it would no longer be running ads for sexual services, including escort agencies and suspicious “massage.” And according to the New York Post, it’s the 15th publication to do so this year.

Writes Lynn, in good third-wave feminist style,

To be sure, not every “Punjab Princess” advertising in New York is doing “bodywork” against her will. And it’s hard to imagine that Pink Orchid is going to close up shop just because it can no longer snare New York readers pretending to be looking for the Approval Matrix. But those are hardly good reasons to shrug and keep running the ads, or to dodge an opportunity to make a move based on principle. One of NOW’s stated goals is to “shed light on how the trafficking industry is a part of the local economy and identify the legitimate businesses that do business with traffickers.” At very least, it’s a necessary reminder that women and men are trafficked not just in Bangkok, and not just in hidden brothels, but right next to our own crossword puzzles.

Due to my obsessive Hillary fascination, I can’t help but comment on ABC’s trumped up catfight story: Pelosi v. Hillary. Since Jessica at feministing said it best, I’m just going to send you to her. What’s next? Hillary and Nancy get naked and fling mud? Jeesh.

Meanwhile, check out Reuter’s mini-survey of what some feminist thinkers think about the possibility of electing Hillary Clinton to the White House. (Stop the presses: Feminists, it turns out, aren’t interested in choosing a candidate based on his or her gender.) And note Carol Jenkin’s take on the male-dominated media’s roll in it all. After more than 20 debates, in which only six women have participated as moderators and questioners compared to more than 30 men, Carol asks, “Where is the slate of newswomen who consistently get to ask the big, important questions? How can we not think of what we’re witnessing as anything but the traditional all-boys club?” Hmm…

Finally, if you’re looking for a satisfying chuckle, do check out Ann and Jessica’s feisty letter to male politicians to please stop playing the male gender card, here. To wit: “It’s just wrong to expect men to vote for you because you smell like Aqua Velva and cigar smoke, because you own a huge ranch and the Western wear to prove it, because you think America needs a “commanding Daddy” to torture the bad guys.” Hehe.

Suggestion: for a quick, deep glimpse into the heart of the beast, go for half-hour treadmill workout at your local gym where you can gaze at a battery of overhead flatscreen TVs, each tuned to a different channel.

A random sequence of images from this morning’s visit:
—an endlessly repeated video clip of a vicious girl fight in a high school locker room
—a promo for the Bionic Woman (much running, jumping, drop-kicking of bad-guys)
—a music video of Jennifer Lopez beating the crap out of more bad-guys in a brothel or something, setting an example for the oppressed sistahs
—a Hummer barrels menacingly towards the viewer through a nighttime wilderness, scaring off would-be attackers (wolves, scorpions); in a second ad the Hummer is shown from a gamer’s POV, barreling into a morphing sequence of rough terrains (desert, arctic, tundra).
— yet another news story on a private “security” firm killing more civilians in Iraq, two women shot dead in their car

What seems to be the signal cutting through all the media noise? Is it that it’s OK now for women to be violent, because, hey, we all get to watch, while men have ramped up to the next level and gone invisible (and unaccountable), inside our all-terrain, obstacle-and-reality-proof paramilitary vehicles? We can’t be sure. But let wolves, scorpions, the environment and helpless civilians beware.

[UPDATE: Deborah Siegel was originally slated to appear on MSNBC this afternoon to comment on the Ohio middle school girl fight video mentioned above, but the story was preempted by the tragic school shooting in Cleveland. With shock and sadness we recognize that the two events are part of a broader ongoing crisis — rage and violence amidst our children — which seems to compound itself day by day. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims in Cleveland and their families.]

Ok, I’m on a roll this morning and really MUST get to work (um, paid work). But I just had to share this post from Jessica over at feministing, on some shoddy reporting about how feminism is responsible for the stripping poles some fraternities are apparently installing in their lust dens.

I saw over the weekend that my Guardian piece on why I hope the whole stripping pole business soon goes the way of the old charred bra was picked up by the Kuwait Times last week. Here’s a tidbit from it – I wonder how this reads in Kuwait??:

What the burned bra was to the second wave, the stripping pole has become to the third – a bogey that distracts us from the far less sexy reality that feminism is, and always has been, serious work. It is time to stop deploying rigid and vapid cliches – damsel, good girl and slut – and fixating on the alleged excesses of one contested aspect. We need to keep our eyes on the wider array of women’s issues. May the stripping pole go the way of the charred bra, a quaint reminder of how those calling it from the sidelines got it very wrong.

I just learned that the forum that Demos, NCRW, Woodhull, and Ms. Foundation sponsored last week on my book will air this Thursday (Aug. 2) from 9:30AM to 10:30 AM ET on Truth For A Change, Time Warner Channel 34, and streaming simultaneously 9:30 AM ET here: http://www.mnn.org (select channel 34).

I just wrote my first love letter to Elle. As folks may know, their current issue features a spread called The Incredible Shrinking Woman with an essay by Gloria Feldt that I think is fantastic. If you agree, feel free to send Elle your love – cuz we know they’re going to get hate mail for it too.