Ruby interviews Kristen Gilger, co-author of ‘There’s no crying in newsrooms,’ on what it was like as a woman in broadcast journalism 30 years ago compared to today. Kristen shares insights on how her expectations and hope of greater equity have unfortunately not matched up with reality and reminds women in the business to remember that they are never alone.
Transcript
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Ruby Arora: Welcome to “We Mean Business.” I’m your host, Ruby Arora. This podcast is about something that affects all of us: business. Our culture and society are molded around business and what business leaders want. It impacts our daily lives more than we know. Here at the Reynolds Center we focus on business journalism, and we’re here acting as the liaison connecting business with journalism, allowing journalists to cover business better.
Kristen Gilger is a Professor of Business Journalism at Arizona State’s Cronkite School of Journalism. Could you please give us a brief synopsis of your background?
Kristen Gilger: Yeah, I worked in newspapers for 20 years before coming to ASU. My positions were mostly various editing positions.
Arora: So what inspired you to write your book, “There’s No Crying in the Newsroom”?
Gilger: Let’s see, maybe because I told too many women that there’s no crying in the newsroom.
Arora: Is that where the title originated from?
Gilger: Actually, where it came from, was we had a terrible time coming up with the title for this, book. I mean, it was like, we’re harder than writing the book, was coming up with the title. And I remembered that one of my favorite movies of all time, A League of Their Own, and there’s that great scene where he says “There’s no crying in baseball.” And I said, “Boy, how many times have I said ‘there’s no crying in the newsroom?’” And I never cried in the newsroom, but that’s not like a good thing necessarily.
Arora: Why’s that?
Gilger: Well, because it is indicative of the role and the place of women in news organizations. Tears were seen as weak. You could not cry in front of your colleagues, no matter how harsh the circumstances. And newsrooms, I mean when I entered newsrooms, they were not – still true to some extent – but they were not particularly welcoming places for women. And so you had to, you know, you had to hide your feelings a lot. You had to be tough. You had to be as tough as one of the guys. And so that was part of it. But you know, also when, and my co-author is Julia Wallace, who’s on our faculty, and she was the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and we worked together at the paper in Oregon, and both she and I, when we entered newsrooms, like, you know, in the early 80s, thought, “things will change.” Because you just need women in the pipeline, right? You need more women, and then it’s going to start changing the culture. And that happened to some extent, but certainly not as much as we expected.
Arora: What did you expect versus what reality is?
Gilger: I mean, I think that even today, most newsrooms could be described as pretty macho culture. Particularly, you know, in certain departments, like sports would be a good example. Editorial, politics and business, to some extent, in business. Women are starting now to almost get to parity in newspapers in terms of being in the top editing positions, but they aren’t there yet. And we just expected that this would all happen much faster than it did. And so we saw our students and our daughters entering an industry that looked an awful lot like one that we had entered. And we went, “why haven’t things changed more?” So that was part of the impetus for writing the book is, was to look at that and try to answer that question. But also, you know, women’s histories are often sort of erased, they’re not told. And we didn’t think that this story of women’s experience in newsrooms, basically from like the 70s on, had been really documented, and nobody had really told their stories. And so we wanted to sort of capture those experiences, thinking that what they experienced and they learned could be helpful for younger women coming into newsrooms today.
Arora: Is it disappointing to hear that now more women than ever are leading broadcasting? There’s a higher turnover rate of women going into journalism and then leaving shortly after x amount of years.
Gilger: Well, you know that the statistics on this are interesting. Overall, journalism schools are predominantly female, and women and men enter the profession at about the same rate and about the same levels, and presumably even about the same pay. And so it’s fairly equitable, starting out, especially if you take out PR. If you take out, I mean, part of it is that a bunch of women are going into PR, but if you take that out, it’s about equal going into the news business. And it stays that way for a while. And then you start seeing 10, 20, and 30 years in, women are dropping out. It’s not happening like in one year or two, but it’s happening typically around that time where you’ve been doing it for a while, and you look around and it isn’t what you had hoped it would be or what you expected, and you see inequities. And maybe you’re tired of the way you’ve been treated. And that’s when women start reevaluating whether this is a long term proposition for them or not. So there’s still, there’s still ways to go. There also pay inequities still. You know, the Los Angeles Times just settled a dispute over pay that showed that women were making something like 30% less than men in the same positions. So there are still inequities after all of these years. You know, 50 years later, we’re still. And if you look at issues like sexual harassment or that kind of treatment of women in newsrooms that still exists as well.
Arora: How would you advise women to go about a situation where they may face sexual harassment in the news or in journalism at all?
Gilger: In general, I would say, you know, to never think that you’re the only one or that you’re alone. And the power is in, you know, is in allies. The power is in other people, men and women, who can be both understanding and supportive of you in that experience. So it depends how you would handle it individually. Sometimes you want to go report it, you know, sometimes it’s something that you can handle, but it should never feel like you’re on your own.
Arora: Would you see it ever getting better in the near future, women are more in power, like you said, in bigger markets?
Gilger: Yes. I mean, I think so. If you look there’s been quite a bit of change recently.
Arora: Would you say it would go at the same pace it did when you were back in 1980?
Gilger: Will it take another 50 years?
Arora: For us to get the other foot in the door.
Gilger: I don’t know. I’m afraid. I don’t want to go out on a limb on that one. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get to full parity. We’re getting closer. In newspapers now, the last statistics I saw, which I think were from 2020, about 47%, 46% of top editing jobs at U.S. newspapers were women.
Arora: Slowly but surely, and hopefully, right?
Gilger: Yeah, hopefully.
Arora: A heading you have on the cover of your book is “What women have learned, like what it takes to lead.” What have you learned? Or what advice can you give to women entering journalism or business journalism?
Gilger: Well, the book is filled with advice, so I have to think of something.
Arora: Buy the book guys.
Gilger: Yeah, so buy the book. Let me think. I would say that one of the things that in my own experience, and in the interviews that we did with women, and we interviewed over 100 people for this book, most of them women, and one of the things that came up a lot that surprised me, was confidence. So these are clearly accomplished women, right? They’ve done amazing things. They’ve led news organizations and they so frequently expressed doubt about themselves. And doubt is not a bad thing. I mean, you know who wants to work for somebody who’s like always 100% sure that they’re right and never has any doubts and doesn’t listen to other people? That’s not what that’s not what you want. But you don’t want to doubt yourself to the point of paralysis. So I think one of the characteristics that ,almost everybody who studies this and writes about this agrees on, that that good leaders have, is the confidence to act, to make decisions, and if, especially if a woman, doesn’t act when action is required, then that undermines the perception of her as a leader to a large extent. And so what I tell myself as a leader and other women is that you have to be willing to act and to make decisions even when you don’t have 100% of the information, and even when you’re not 100% sure. And will you make mistakes? Yes, it’s probably better than not acting than being frozen. For me, you know, it’s like if I have 90% of the information I need, I’m 80% sure, then I might move ahead. Because you have to keep moving. You have to be able to make decisions. So that’s one piece of advice that I might offer.
Arora: What would you say a woman should do if she’s indecisive in a situation and like pressure is on, like it’s all or nothing, and don’t be all like a decision needs to be made.
Gilger: For the most part, I would say, you know, as quickly as you can consult, get as much information as you can think about it, for the as much time as you can wrangle to think about and then make a decision. Make a decision.
Arora: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions for my podcast.
Gilger: You’re welcome.
Arora: Thanks to everyone for listening. Make sure you subscribe and join us next time, as we talk about more business topics and what journalists need to know.
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