Tribune's 'WomanNews' gives voice to women's issues

Newspaper Research Journal, Winter 2002 by Lueck, Therese L, Chang, Huayun

Pregnancy was not only news on the News & Opinion page. On the Helping Hands page, the vice president of a public relations firm advised that pregnancy in the workplace "should be approached like any other business situation ... do your homework and be prepared." She offered the encouragement that it is "possible to be pregnant and professional at the same time. But it requires extra effort."24 Pregnancy is a defining women's issue. In these "WomanNews" articles, women were able to write about important aspects of being pregnant, including how they were treated in the male-dominated workplace and how they coped while there. Each of these women found constructive aspects in their non-traditional workplace settings, and they arrived at optimistic conclusions without patronizing pregnant women and without treating pregnancy as a disease, as it is often characterized across culture.

Many women addressed issues of breaking the "glass ceiling," particularly in prestigious male-dominated fields. For example, Taeko Nagai, one of the only female Japanese TV newscasters with the power to make programming decisions, said, "Women have to fight to get an assignment to cover political and economic issues, as their bosses, overwhelmingly males, naturally assign male reporters to cover these `hard issues.'"25 Laurel Bellows, attorney and president of the Chicago Bar Association, stated: "Whenever I am asked if women lawyers strike a glass ceiling as they move toward the top of their profession, I have a good news-bad news answer. The bad news is that we do. The good news is that it's getting higher and the glass is no longer shatterproof. "26

In speaking for themselves, women brought overlooked subjects and new perspectives to the paper. Most poignantly, women revealed their experiences as victims of sexual abuse. In the hope that her story could spare the pain of others, Marilyn Van Debur, Miss America 1958, disclosed that she had been sexually molested by her father when she was a child.27 Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics, looked back at a sexual harassment encounter that happened when she was 21 and questioned what she could have done to terminate the harasser's advances. She reasoned, "I wonder why I didn't just tell him to leave me alone. But I know the answer. It's the old injunction that echoes in the ears of all girls: Be nice, don't make trouble, don't hurt anyone's feelings." Tannen concluded, "Sexual harassment will remain ... until men as well as women understand that pressing sexual advances on women who don't want them is distressing to women, and that when there is a power imbalance, women do not feel free to 'just say no.'"28

At the outset, many of the Other Voices were columnists from other papers, but by the end of the year, the section was soliciting articles from readers. Opening up the section in this manner would enable readers to tell their stories of coping in a man's world, stories with which readers could identify.

Principle #2: Analysis of media's role to women