Tipping the balance for equity in OpEds

Katherine Lanpher at the Chicago Core Seminar

More than a week after a double session of the Chicago Core Seminar of the OpEd Project held at the Medill Chicago newsroom (part of the Medill School at Northwestern University where I am an assistant professor of journalism), I am still buzzing. I am electrified by the energy and ideas of the nearly 40 participants, their expertise and their intentions to change the world with specific knowledge and insight to share across platforms with the public.

Non-profit ceo’s, academics, researchers, lawyers, a doctor, a judge, social media experts, publishers, teachers, executives and even a member of the Secret Service, spent six hours focused on how best to articulate a balanced argument that will produce an intended outcome.
It almost sounds like the beginnig of a good joke” “A doctor, lawyer, teacher, Secret Service agent and a social media expert walk ito a bar…”

With seminar co-leaders Zeba Khan, Katherine Lanpher and Deborah Siegel, all in from New York for the session, we delivered a day of instruction, feedback, interaction and at time hilarious encouragement. We discussed and debated the upside of being outspoken and deliberate with specific knowledge.

“If you write something of consequence, there will be consequences,” Lanpher warned. “The alternative is to be inconsequential.”

Gina Marotta, managing director of StepUp Women’s Network in Chicago, rallied several members to particpate in the session, while representatives from Northwestern and DePaul University, all were vocal and engaged. We are anticipating their published viewpoints.

The more people moving successfully through the core seminars and sessions of The OpEdProject, the closer we get to tipping the balance toward gender equity or at least diversity of viewpoints in mainstream media opinion pages. The latest byline count from the OpEd project shows small gains at the traditional sites such as NYT and Washington Post, with an increase from non-staffer women but on “pink topics.”

More work to do. More seminars to offer. More voices to hear. More new knowledge to share.We can try again, same place, January 15. The OpEdProject is back in Chicago to continue to make a difference.

Guts is not the problem, but training is the solution

I have guts. A lot of guts. Guts is not the issue.

Recently Poynter.org’s Mallory Jean Tenore wrote that Minnesota Public Radio’s Eric Ringham claimed women and all others who felt left out of the public discourse in opinion pages of mainstream media needed to “summon up some guts to dive in.”

Women journalists have more guts than most anybody I know. For the Journalism & Women Symposium annual camp held in Texas last year, the t-shirt read, “Don’t Mess With a Woman Journalist.” We are not generally a timid bunch.

Many, many men and women journalists have been protesting for years about the inequity of gender –and color– refelcted in bylines and guest shots on opinion pages, broadcasts  and Internet sites for years. For YEARS. I did a chapter on it in my 2008 book, Everyman News: “Diversity of Thought Changes Content.”

Every once in a while, a gender-balanced or predominatly female byline count of a opinion or home page will feel fresh and victorious. And then it’s back to the same old same old.

Which is why founder and director of The Op-Ed Project Katie Orenstein is bringing the show to Chicago June 11 for a day-long core seminar with journalist, author and broadcaster Katherine Lanpher as workshop leader.

In bringing the Op/Ed Project to Chicago, partnering with Women of the World and Northwestern University’s Medill School, where I am an assistant journalsim professor, the goal is for thought leaders in the area to feel compelled to show up and spend a day learning how to be seen and heard. Diversify the conversation.

Because it isn’t about guts and it isn’t about surveys, updates and byline counts. It’s about having your voice listened to amid the noise. It’s about making a difference. Being the change. And not just screaming at the wind.

Surgeon General Loves Reporters

Dr. Regina Benjamin, the 18th U.S. Surgeon General, has gone from being bothered by reporters to embracing the chance to be interviewed.

Speaking to an audience of about 100 in a half-filled auditorium at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago earlier this week, the first female African-American doctor whose job is to care for 300 million Americans admitted she used to hate when journalists would call.

“A reporter would call and say, ‘I want to interview you,’ and I was annoyed because I wanted to see patients,” said the former small-town family practice phyisician in Louisiana in her MacArthur Fellows Science Lecture.

But after one local article sparked a pile of letters from third graders who said they wanted to grow up and be like her, she changed her mind.

“Those articles were not about me,” Benjamin said, nodding to her sorority sisters in the audience from Delta Sigma Theta. “They were about them. I have been answering reporters ever since. You never know who is watching you. And with that comes responsibility.”

Sure, the former MacArthur Fellow spoke about major health issues facing Americans– obesity, poverty, sexually transmitted diseases, breastfeeding, substance abuse, violence and the overall healthcare system–  but her focus on personal responsibility for influencing the wider culture was what stuck. 

“I want to change the way we think about health,” Benjamin said to nods and applause. “We have to move from a system focusing on sick care to a system focused on prevention and wellness.”

Formerly criticized as someone who was not a lean example of perfect health, Benjamin said she considered walking as “taking medication,” and said her own walk in the Grand Canyon proved any and every American can become active.

Admitting “you can’t legislate behavior,” Benjamin was as patient answering audience questions ranging from the absurdly personal  to the contextually thoughtful, as she said she is from reporters.

Speaking about her own grandmother’s move to start an all-black church in Lousiana decades ago, Benjamin advocated for “servant leadership,” and her own model of “leadership from behind.” She explained that this philosophy centers on the notion that “you don’t forget to reach behind and pull someone else up. You also push them out in front of you and let them know you have their back. They will know you will not let them fall. ” 

It was an uplifting prescription for success and one I wish more from every profession would adopt.

America Speaks But Who Listens?

Can 3,500 “regular Americans” come up with at least one good idea?

At a robustly informative event at the University Club in Chicago in late July hosted by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation about the fiscal future of America, MacArthur president Robert Gallucci explained America Speaks, a project partially funded byMacArthur along with other private foundations.

The innovative and inclusive project, headed by Carolyn Lukensmeyer, “discussed ways ordinary Americans can deal with problems,” Gallucci said.

America Speaks is an Everyman solution to every America’s financial concerns. The project was a 21st Century Town hall meeting launched in Philadelphia with 3,500 participants across 60 American cities in late June.

Chicago’s Navy Pier  was one site that attracted 500 eager participants. From Detroit to Des Moines, Louisville to Dallas, a diverse group of Americans came together to brainstorm for ways to secure our nation’s future fiscal health.

According to Gallucci, “A nation that does not control its finances does not control its destiny.”

Great democratic idea creatively executed, but will policy makers hear any of it? Really? Or will the results, painstakingly gathered, organized and streamlined, just be more everyman anecdotes for political stump speeches?

We’ll see.