Women Journalists Connect at the IWMF Networking Breakfast in Boston

by Lindsey Wray
Placing her hands on top of her head, Helen Donovan, executive editor at The Boston Globe, made a sweeping motion.
At the IWMF’s networking breakfast March 29 at the Globe, a roomful of journalists seemed slightly confused about this action.
Was her head itching? Had a bug flown into her hair?
Far from it. Instead, the gesture was symbolic—she was brushing away the glass after having helped to shatter the figurative glass ceiling.
Donovan is part of a generation of women who made great breakthroughs in gaining access to upper management jobs in journalism, an arena previously – and often still – dominated by men.
The IWMF invited her and five other prominent women journalists to share their perspectives in an informal setting with women journalists in Boston who continue to face gender gaps in the workplace and who are interested in learning how to move forward in their careers.
New forms of journalism, particularly on the Internet, can provide ways for women to make these advances, Donovan said.
“A sense of experimentation has really invigorated everybody,” she said.
But Ellen Goodman noted that blogs can create a virtual “good ‘ol boy” network, especially in political discussions.
“We still have a kind of his and hers news,” said Goodman, a syndicated columnist for the Globe.
To leverage this difference, Carole Simpson called for women and minorities to make up for the ground they’re starting to lose.
“The progress is starting to erode,” said Simpson, a former ABC News anchor who is now leader-in-residence at Emerson College.
She hopes to use her current position to motivate women to “get back into the pipeline” in the media industry.
Ellen Hume, director of the Center on Media and Society at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, agreed with the need to engage both journalists and the public.
“The whole future of journalism is about connecting,” she said.
Moving a lot when she was growing up and spending her career in journalism taught Hume to always expect something different, a necessary skill for journalists, she said.
“You have to be dexterous; you have to be nimble; you have to be open-minded.”
Hume encountered such discrimination as being asked by a source when she was reporting for the Detroit Free Press why she was covering business instead of fashion.
“It was a wild frontier,” she said.
Women journalists are positioned to become media leaders, the journalists agreed at the IWMF breakfast, whether it involves forging through this frontier or walking on the broken glass of partially shattered glass ceilings.
Lindsey Wray is the IWMF’s communications assistant.

IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Forum Calls for Global Understanding, Respect

by Lindsey Wray

Curiosity. Passion. A deep desire to understand the world.

These attributes of Elizabeth Neuffer, a correspondent for The Boston Globe who was killed on assignment in Iraq in 2003, inspired the third Elizabeth Neuffer Forum, held in March at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston with the theme of understanding and reporting on women and Islam.

Keynote speaker at the forum was William Nash (U.S. Army, Ret.), who explained how, even in difficult circumstances, Neuffer inspired him and others; she approached people and journalism with an open mind and the willingness to listen to all perspectives.

“Elizabeth’s ability to reach out and talk to the people that she wanted to learn from was beyond the norm,” said Nash, who knew Neuffer when he was the commander of the U.S. Army in Bosnia.

Neuffer was a 1998 winner of an IWMF Courage in Journalism Award whose life mission was to promote international understanding of human rights and social justice. The IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Forum honors her memory while advancing this mission.

Nash named qualities of Neuffer that would be essential to enlisting in the “army of Elizabeth Neuffer.” This job wouldn’t suit everyone, he said, but those who could count themselves as members would have a firm, profound grasp of the world. Neuffer, he added, had a keen ability to understand issues beyond the battlefield. In her determination to tell all sides of a story, he said, she skillfully balanced competing priorities.

“She educated me on the tragedies that took place and the broader perspectives that affected the people,” he said, “and in her questions, you understood her quest for justice.”

Though her life has ended, Neuffer’s quest for justice continues. In dealing with a world full of conflict, Nash said, there must be respect for diversity, including religious diversity. He called for people to “work from a perspective of dignity and respect” to take on the same task that Elizabeth Neuffer did: to understand others and the world.

“We – you – must do much better.”

*******

Nash’s address was preceded by a panel discussion, featuring experts who discussed the challenge of understanding of Islam in personal, spiritual and political contexts.

In her introduction to the forum, Renee Loth, editorial page editor for The Boston Globe, said, “The question of women in the Islamic world…has immense implications…for the peaceful development of the entire planet.”

Listen to audio clips from the panel discussion:

• Kishwer Falkner on terrorism in the context of religion and ideology
• Lily Munir on discrimination against women in the Koran
• Geneive Abdo on the complexities of the Islamic world

Politkovskaya Remembered in Light of International Women’s Day

In honor of International Women’s Day, Maria Cristina Caballero, former director of investigations at Semana, a weekly news magazine in Colombia, wrote about former IWMF Courage in Journalism Award Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who was killed in October 2006.
Click here to read the article on PostGlobal.