ONA Issues

techladymafia:

Phillip Lenssen: Can you give some examples of misogyny or racism?

Aaron Swartz: If you talk to any woman in the tech community, it won’t be long before they start telling you stories about disgusting, sexist things guys have said to them. It freaks them out; and rightly so. As a result, the only women you see in tech are those who are willing to put up with all the abuse. I really noticed this when I was at foo camp once, Tim O’Reilly’s exclusive gathering for the elite of the tech community. The executive guys there, when they thought nobody else was around, talked about how they always held important business meetings at strip clubs and the deficiencies of programmers from various countries. Meanwhile, foo camp itself had a session on discrimination in which it was explained to us that the real problem was not racism or sexism, but simply the fact that people like to hang out with others who are like themselves. The denial about this in the tech community is so great that sometimes I despair of it ever getting fixed. And I should be clear, it’s not that there are just some bad people out there who are being prejudiced and offensive. Many of these people that I’m thinking of are some of my best friends in the community. It’s an institutional problem, not a personal one.

Mallary Tenore examines how journalists report on rape after Melinda Henneberger, reporter at the Washington Post, decided to share her story about being raped years ago.

One in six women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime, and 97 percent of rapists will never spend a day in jail, recent statistics show. Based on those figures, someone in your newsroom has been sexually assaulted.

Being aware of this reality informs our decisions when we assign stories and report them. When we understand that sexual assault is common, we’re less likely to make assumptions about our colleagues and our sources. We may also be less inclined to make comments that belittle the severity of sexual assault — and more inclined to cover it as an ongoing issue rather than as a one-time event.

Too often, journalists write about sexual assaults right after they occur and neglect to write follow-ups that highlight how traumatic these assaults can be. 

Read more on Poynter.

The International Women’s Media Foundation will award three $20,000 grants to entrepreneurial women journalists proposing to use digital media in innovative ways to deliver the news. In addition to seed funding, the program provides coaching from leading entrepreneurs and digital news media experts.

This is a great opportunity. The International Women’s Media Foundation has already awarded six of these $20,000 grants to women journalists so they can launch their own  digital media startups. Now they’re accepting applications for the next round of grants. Apply!

Public voting is now open for the 2012 Women’s Media Center Social Media Award. Learn about the nominees and vote on womensmediacenter.com. The winner will be honored at the Women’s Media Awards on November 13 in New York City. Sady Doyle, founder of the anti-sexist blog TigerBeatdown.com, was honored last year.