Women in Journalism

Good morning! Here's the feminist news on our radar.

• Today, Arkansas might be the 36th state to ratify the ERA. Help show your support and spread the word. [ERA Action]

• April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center has lots of way that you can take action. [National Sexual Violence Resource Center]

• NPR interviewed Ari Seth Cohen, talking about his blog Advanced Style, which features the beautiful and stylish older women of NYC. [NPR, Advanced Style]

• We all know Rosa Parks, but she wasn't the first to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. Democracy Now interviews Claudette Colvin, who was just 15 when she was arrested for doing the same. [Democracy Now, NewBlackMan (in Exile)]

• The National Magazine Award nominees have been announced, and this year half of them are women! [Mother Jones]

• A six-year-old girl in Afghanistan was going to be sold into marriage to repay her father's debt, until an anonymous donor paid the debt. [New York Times]

• New York State Sen. Eric Adams has testified that the "stop and frisk" program was intended to intimidate minorities. [Raw Story]

• We're getting ready for this weekend's season premiere of Mad Men and are excited to see what social and feminist storylines might be on the horizon. [Women's Voices For Change]

• Speaking of Mad Men, John Hamm is getting really tired of people talking about his penis, and he's not the only one. [Tiger Beatdown]

• The Yeah Yeah Yeahs released a video for "Sacrilege" from their upcoming album, depicting slut shaming to the extreme. [Feminspire]

Is there anything I missed? Share what you're reading in the comments!

While newspapers at home struggle to stay relevant and profitable, reporters abroad struggle to stay alive. Dedicated to exposing the truth, protecting their sources, and improving the quality of life for those living in war-torn nations, the men and women (especially women) reporting intenationally frequently find themselves targeted. Since the Committee to Protect Journalists started keeping track in 1992, 972 journalists have been killed. In her new gallery exhibition of oil portraits, “Frontline Heroines,” Seattle artist Judith Larson puts faces to some of those numbers.

"This represents my return to art, because I had a motive," says Larson, who herself has spent the last 20 years working primarily as a reporter. Seattle’s Fountainhead Gallery is filled with the large portraits of women killed while working as journalists. 

The newspaperman, and newspaperwoman, have long captured the American imagination – and reporters, anchors, and even photojournalists have served as the protagonists in comics, animation, television and film.

As a woman writer and pop culture herstorian I can’t help but be drawn to places in pop culture where women and journalism intersect – and that means I absolutely adore Lois Lane.

She is not the first woman reporter in popular culture, but Lois is likely the most recognizable – and certainly the longest lasting in the American cultural consciousness, having debuted alongside Superman and Clark Kent in 1938.

Like many real-life women reporters of her day, Lois Lane began her career writing romance columns and covering other "women’s news." Rather than spend her career as a "sob sister", she was anxious to tackle more challenging material, but her editor assigned the hard-hitting stories to Lois’ journalistic rival, Clark Kent, and insisted the work was too important for "a girl."