Viva la Feminista

The loss of Gwen Ifill is one of those pieces of knowledge that causes me to stop breathing when I remember it. At a time when we need hard-hitting journalism, there is a gaping hole in our media without her. The folks at the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) feel the same way as they just announced a new award in Ifill's name : Ifill was a bright light in the news industry, an incredible role model and mentor for young journalists – especially women journalists of color – and a friend of the IWMF. The Award will be given annually to an outstanding woman journalist of color whose work carries forward Ifill’s legacy. In addition to the award, the IWMF will develop a corresponding program focused on mentorship and network building. It will be open to both journalism students and women journalists of color working in the news media. Candidates for the award will be evaluated on criteria including their record of outstanding achievement in journalism, and the ...

Starting with the current issue of Women's Review of Books you can now read the issues online in addition to print. To celebrate this move towards online access to this great outlet, anyone can read the current issue online.   In this issue WRB looks to the work of Black Lives Matter and the intersectional politics of the new movement as well as its similarities and differences, in politics and strategies, from previous organizing. Go read! Then if you like, subscribe .

Proposals are sought from scholars across all disciplines for the fourth edition of  Race/Gender/Class/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers  (Routledge, 2019). Edited by Rebecca Ann Lind, University of Illinois at Chicago ( rebecca@uic.edu ), the book will examine the consequences, implications, or opportunities associated with issues of diversity (socially constructed differences such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, etc.) in media. The fourth edition should be at least as wide-ranging in scope  as prior editions . Most accepted pieces will present original scholarship. There are three main sections: content, audience, and production.   Content focuses most closely on texts created by media  organizations.  Audience include s media usage, effects of media, audience  interpretations of media content, and studies of user-generated content.  Production  includes studies of media organizatio...

This year I am asking you to consider giving to one (or both) of these organizations: Bitch Media is an almost-20-year-old feminist media organization. You may be most familiar with their magazine, but they also publish an amazing blog and podcast. They are independent and rely on reader support. Bitch Media has given a lot of writers their first paid outlet. Recently they launched a fellowship to further support their efforts to launch emerging writers. Earlier this year, I joined the board of directors. As a board member of Bitch Media, I need your help to raise $1,000 by the end of December 2015.  Please donate an amount that is a slight stretch for you. It can be $10 or even $100. Join me in being a sustaining member of Bitch Media by giving a small amount every month. When you do, you get to be a member of the B-Hive! How cool is that name? The Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) has a goal of $8,000 this year! They are a 25-year-old organization where countless in...

The latest case of foot-in-mouth disease, Chicago sports radio personality, Dan Bernstein. Wednesday night, Bernstein took to Twitter to question the ability of a woman sports reporter's abilities. He woke up the next morning with a Twitter hangover. But unlike the young man who called Mo'ne Davis a slut , so far Bernstein has gotten off scott-free. The Chicago Tribune reports that "Bernstein admitted on air he didn't realize he was in the middle of a blazing social media firestorm until he woke up Thursday morning. Only then did it hit him that making Twitter comments about a woman sports anchor's appearance probably wasn't a good career move." Ya, think? What was his offending tweet about? Boobs .  Since he joined the radio station in 1995 , we can assume that he is not a teenage boy unaccustomed to seeing women or women's body parts. So what would make a grown man say something, never mind it was on Twitter, about a colleague's appea...

I missed BinderCon because it was in NYC and I was at Space Camp! I haven't heard a lot of what happened so I was excited to see this video clip from the panel "Looking Forward: Roles for Women in the Future of Media." Jessica McGlory , the founder of Forecastr (@TVforecast) says some awesome stuff. Hopefully BinderCon will realize that those of us in the Midwest would love to host!

Post by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner .

The kid is not just a smarty pants kid, but she is also pretty observant about the world . I would like to think it is due to me being honest with her about media issues and not denying her voice when she speaks up. She also has a super cool aunt who wrote a book about Reality TV and does media criticism for a living. It is quite a proud moment for me when I get to point out Photoshopping on magazine covers to her to show her that no one is that perfect. But I know I can't do it alone. That is why I was excited to learn that the Girl Scouts has new "journeys" (what they call curriculum units) on media and story telling. I was lucky to get a chance to ask Dr. Andrea Bastiani Archibald, Developmental Psychologist at Girl Scouts of USA, about the new media units. I asked her how we can raise girl leaders without feeding into the "good girl" stereotype. I know I catch myself talking to the kid about being a good role model or a leader, I find that what I...

This post is part of the WAM! It Yourself Blogathon ! WAM! It Yourself is a multi-city decentralized conference on gender and media run by Women, Action & the Media. Events are taking place in seven cities and online from March 20th to March 27th. Check out the full schedule of events here ! I hiked down to McCormick Place to attend the second annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo on Saturday. I was able to attend by requesting a press pass. I'm not writing this because it was a condition of the pass though. OK, disclaimer out of the way. How did it go? It was fun. I could only attend for a few hours, but it was fun to sit and watch all the fans walking around. The families passing on their love of comics & comic-related entertainment to the kids. The geek couples dressed up and holding hands. The groups who dressed up in themes or didn't dress up at all. But the group that drew me in the most were the dads walking around with...

Watch the full episode . See more To The Contrary. Thanks to friend of VLF, Kim Gandy for mentioning this blog while discussing mom blogs on this week's episode of " To the Contrary." Bonnie Erbé starts the conversation about mom bloggers off at 9:45 in the video. The focus starts with women's purchasing power and how some mom bloggers are "an advertisers dream come true." Kim jumps in around 12:10 in the video. It's a great topic that Bonnie introduced, one that many of us mom bloggers have debated on and off-line for years . Where is the line between suggesting products that work to your friends/readers and just using them to pitch junk to so you get paid? And what does that do to our community? So Bonnie, if you want to continue this conversation, let me know and I'll high tail it to DC. Even if I did just get back from DC on Friday. There's also PunditMom in your backyard. But she does have ads on her blog, I don't. So there....re...

The election got you down? Turn that frown upside down with Reality Bites Back book trailers! Check out the full series at YouTube all week!

As a math nrrd, I'm a tad obsessed with the use of stats in public discourse, especially when being used in political debate. Lately I feel like all I hear about are stats about violence going up or down or perhaps into the fourth dimension. Here in Chicago, many of FEEL that we're going through a very violent summer. Shootings here, there, everywhere. We had another violent weekend and ABC7Chicago reported on it by heading down to Garfield Park and talking to a long time resident . He goes on to talk about how he can SEE violence going up. Then ABC7-Chicago splashes these stats up on our screen while quoting the Chief of Police that violence and homicides are down in 2010. Did you see that? ABC7-Chicago gets a man in Garfield Park to discuss violence in his neighborhood and the ABC7-Chicago gives us stats for Chicago as a whole, as does the Police Department. This man could very well be correct, as could the police. So I headed over to EveryBlock Chicago to churn the...

This is a lesson in being fearless. After my panel on Thursday I went wandering around Netroots Nation and spotted Amy Goodman in line to get Ed Schultz to sign his book. I thought, "OMG, it's Amy Goodman!" so I went up to her to say hi and be all silly fangirl. Well Amy and one of her friends/coworkers/partner in arms started asking me where I was from, what I did, etc. Amy got her book signed and I chatted with Dennis some more. Then Amy asked which way I was walking and I said, "I walk, where you walk." She chuckled. After a few minutes of chatting, she whips out for mini-digital camera and starts interviewing me. At first I just babbled like an idiot, but recovered well despite thinking the whole time, "OMFG, Amy Goodman is interviewing me!" So for your youngsters out there, don't be afraid to walk up to people you admire, be ready with your 30-second "This is who I am" talk and be prepared for anything. Cause some days anythin...

Jennifer Pozner at WIMNs Voices: It happened again . Another violent guy shot and killed his wife — and went on to gun down six other women unfortunate enough to be in his path before committing suicide. Four women are now dead; three others are in critical condition. And some media outlets (such as the AP story on Yahoo! News , “5 dead after shooting in Miami-area restaurant,”) are still failing to report this as a gender-based hate crime… echoing previous journalistic failures.  Me two years ago:  Friend of Viva la Feminista, Jennifer Pozner has been writing about the gender imbalance in school, now mass, shootings since Jonesboro in 1996. Heck, one of my first pseudo-blogs back then was the keep a running photo memorial to the women killed in the shootings from Jonesboro to Columbine. Yet time again, shooting after shooting, the media scoffs aside the fact that MEN do most of the killing.   Is there anything new to add to this conversation? No...

Yes, I entered the Washington Post's Next Great Pundit contest. I cobbled together a piece about adoption, abortion, feminism and my undying love for Dawn Friedman . Then Latinos in America was on and I sent in an entry about how much I did not appreciate that series. I knew it was a publicity sontest for WaPo , but the fact that they excluded already published op-ed'ers made me believe I had a decent shot. When I saw that the ten finalists were 5 men and 5 women, I was fairly happy. Four of the dudes appeared to be white. Strike. The women seemed fairly diverse in ethnicity as well as kinda age. Althou someone on one of the many listservs I'm on said they felt the candidates skewed young. Point taken. Then the final two came down to a white dude, Kevin, and a woman of color, Zeba. I guess I thought the feminist media community would throw it's weight behind Zeba - She worked on Obama's campaign and while her pieces weren't screaming feminism, she fit what ...

Don't ask me to bring diversity to your organization, ask me to join your organization for my skills, my knowledge or because you just love me. Don't think that I'm the pepper to your bland mashed potatoes. I am the garlic to those potatoes - the first thing you put on the skillet after you start to boil the water. Where you dash on pepper, throw in some onion and make me a vital part of the dish....Not the afterthought.  *** Media itself is changing rapidly and in Chicago we have a new player in the game, the Chicago News Cooperative. Laura Washington gave them a tongue lashing for the total lack of diversity they are starting out with: Nearly every staff member they have named so far is white -- and male. The co-op's board is white, all but one male. I would venture there are vast swaths of the city they don't know and rarely traverse.... If these reporters and editors check with the U.S. Census, they will discover that Chicago's racial and ethnic bas...

Join fellow progressive media professionals and activists to discuss how we can work together to create more media democracy and media justice, important steps to building a just society. The Metro Chicago Progressive Media Network … invites you join us for ... 2009 Media Democracy Day - Chicago Date/Time: November 7, 2009, 1-4-pm Location: Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn Ave, Chicago, IL See: www.chicagoprogmedia.org . PROMOTE MEDIA ACCESS TO ALL SEGMENTS OF SOCIETY! . PROMOTE MEDIA THAT INFORMS THE PUBLIC ON IMPORTANT ISSUES! . NETWORK WITH OTHER PROGRESSIVE MEDIA PROFESSIONALS AND MEDIA ACTIVITS . CREATE MEDIA INITIATIVES TO STRENGTHEN DIALOGUE AROUND THE CHALLENGES FACING OUR WORLD! Initially Media Democracy Day (MD day) was organized by local Toronto and Vancouver groups of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. In 2002, events were held in cities around the world. A Media Democracy Day has been held in Chicago in the past. Today the tradition of...

Event Details When::  09/21/2009 -- 6:00pm - 8:30pm Where:: Chicago Cultural Center, 5th floor Washington and Garland Rooms 78 E. Washington St. See map: Google Maps Fee: Free. Open to the public Reservations are required Is the media fair and objective or is the media becoming more partisan? Can we point to the recent resignation of Van Jones as an indication of the growing power of the media on politics and policy? Does the media influence politics or is it the other way around? What should the role of the media be in a democracy? Laura Flanders , host of “GRITtv” -- the new news and culture discussion program online, on satellite and on cable TV – will engage us in a lively conversation about these issues and more. This conversation will be moderated by Barbara Ransby , Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Plus, hear a few words from Lisa Lee , founder of The Public Square. Following the presentation, we invi...

It was a pleasure to be on Diego Mulligan's show, The Journey Home , this evening. Diego & I spent a lot of time chatting about health care reform and mom blogs, so I thought that I'd pull up a few recent posts on health care on a few of my favorite mom blogs: PunditMom points us to some great places for information on health care reform ; CultureKitchen (a blog that happens to be run by a mom) demands that Bean & Foster give us health care reform ; MOMocrats discusses what is actually in the health care bills about abortion ; MOMocrats take on Sarah Palin and her death panel comment ; One MOMocrat tells her story of losing her health insurance ; VivirLatino (run by a mami blogger) discusses health care in immigration detention centers, or the lack there of health care in immigration detention centers ; Feminist Breeder tells us why we don't need that c-section ; MomsRising is also a great source for mama's discussing health care . Thanks for visiting!

In the last six months or so, Chicago has had its fair share of townhalls and gatherings trying to figure out what the heck is happening with corporate media. What will happen when the newspapers finally fail? Will they? Where did the journalists go? After the first townhall, that I had to miss, another conference was called. In the lead up to both events, I tweeted my desire to see gender parity on the panels . My tweets were replied to with “we’re trying!” Apparently most of the kick ass women (and people of color) in Chicago media were busy both days. I know some people just don’t get it. I know people close to me don’t get it. They don’t understand why women need to be at the freaking table, in the newsroom and holding the editor’s red pen – it’s just as simple as women see things differently. Not better, not worse, just differently. The latest example is the WaPo “Mouthpiece Theater” fiasco that ended with WaPo pulling the plug . Two men thought that calling the Secretary o...