The Search for Alternatives

It is interesting to notice that there are not many women in the news media field. It never came to my attention until I read the statistics of what the actual percentages of women and especially minority women were in the field of news media. As Bell Hooks stated "Patriarchy is a political social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females," (18.) This further supports that women are not seen as capable to report news, or even be a part of news media. Not only is being a female in the media news field is tough, but being a female that is different in any way whether it be nationality wise, or in terms of social status the mainstream media seems to attack. A writer from the youth media reporter had asked " what happens to a youth media organization when directly attacked by a powerful media source not because they cover immigration, but because their own imagination status marks them as a "terrorist threat"? (1.) This happened to a young women who happened to be in training to be in the news media field. This really comes to show the problems in our society, and how it is still incapable of accepting women much less a women of a different culture to be in news media. Although this is a major issue a solution can be found to this better improve the situation.


It is important that we as a society look for alternatives to include women in news media, and more importantly include women of diverse backgrounds as well. It is obviously seen that the mainstream news media will want to attack, but if we as a community push against the mainstream news media, i believe alternative news media will succeed. I also think it will take a while before we see any diversity in the mainstream news media, but I think it is possible to see more diversity, and women. With that said one way I found that helps women as they said in their mission "to increase women's presence in the public debate. emphasizing those who are least often heard, including women of color, low-income women, lesbians, youth and older women." (mission from WINM.) This website is called Women in News Media, not to be confused with Women News Network. The great thing about this website is that it focus on women, and it focus on educating all women about all aspects of news media ranging from media analysis to media reform. They also have programs, and these lecture series that cover on topics such as "when Anchormen attack: Gender, Race and the Media in election 2008." They also are staring to reach out into mainstream media! Although I'm not sure how positive this attention on the mainstream media is (and I'm hoping it's good attention!) it comes to show that it is possible to create an alternative form of media and have it expand into the mainstream news media. The website also has a section in which you can sign up for e-mail reminders, and it is located in Brooklyn, NY. Last but not least I'm pretty sure that this website is run by women, I read somewhere that the chair person for the website made an appearance on a TV show and she is a women, and I believe that the writers for the site is women as well. I thought this was an interesting post and after looking at other posts I've come to realize that there is actually a lot of alternatives out there it's just a matter of looking for them.

Photo credit screenshot from WINM