WHY IT MATTERS. I’ve been exceptionally impressed with the quality of the comments on this blog over the past week, which have been wonderfully intelligent, thoughtful, and polite. One question that’s come up over and over, however, is why this topic mattered, or should matter, to those outside of elite media circles. Let me try […]
Garance Franke-Ruta
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
THE POWER OF MARKET FORCES. Kevin e-mailed me to add to Massie’s point, below, noting that the local newcaster formula is almost always one male and one female anchor, partly because market forces demand it. I’d add that television and film both seem to demand greater gender parity than less visual media because the visual […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Amity in the U.K.
AMITY IN THE U.K….My friend Alex Massie of The Scotsman writes in to say that the Op-Ed pages in the U.K. are rather more open to women than their U.S. counterparts, but for structural as well as cultural reasons: British papers seem to have far more female columnists than their American counterparts. Upon some reflection […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Women in the Blogosphere: The Data
WOMEN IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: THE DATA…. MyDD has helpfully culled Henry Copeland’s blogads survey data for some demographic facts: Gender, Mean Age, Median Income Female Male Age Income All 24.5 75.5 41.4 $79.2K Dem 31.0 69.0 40.4 $77.3K Rep 19.3 80.7 44.5 $87.6K Ind 22.2 77.8 41.5 $74.0K Lib 13.4 86.6 38.1 $83.6K Green 26.0 […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
The Broader Problem
THE BROADER PROBLEM….Thanks to Katha and Amy for starting this off. I think I agree with just about everything that Katha said, and appreciate how forthright she has been (as always!). I also want to thank Kevin for pushing this story forward. I have a fair bit to say on this topic, but wanted to […]
Posted inMagazine
Homeland Security is for Girls
On the day he delivered the ominous news of an Orange alert, Ridge suggested that citizens secure duct tape, plastic sheeting, and other necessities to construct a “safe room” in the event that a toxic cloud of something awful happened to settle over their homes. As a resident of Washington D.C., a city that’s been […]
Posted inMagazine
George Washington’s Bioterrorism Strategy
I soon learned the vaccination would not be a simple procedure. It would most likely lead to a fever, flu-like symptoms, and an oozing sore on my arm that could take four weeks to heal. More importantly, because it involved being infected with a small dose of a living organism—the procedure for so-called “live-virus” vaccines—I […]
Posted inMagazine
Spin Doctors
Thompson was, of course, quickly proved wrong. The truth about Stevens’s case soon emerged–four more people were killed by anthrax-laced letters sent by a bioterrorist still at large–and with it the embarrassing fact that the Bush administration had essentially botched the job of communicating with the American people. Famous for its message discipline, the White […]
