December 1993

Joining the Ranks of Freelance Journalism

By JUDY FLANDERS
For me, JAWS has been the catalyst and craft. It’s no small thing to be able to reach across the country to others in nearly identical little canoes. Sometimes just a phone call or a fax from [a] JAWS pal is enough to shove us off a shoal.
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August 1991

Pulitzers Prize Women

By MELINDA VOSS
But is it significant that so many women won the industry’s most coveted award? Considering that that Pulitzer Board has a spotty record of awarding prestigious prizes to women, even in the last five years, the answer can hardly be anything but yes.
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April 1991

Advice: Pick Your Fights, Neutralize ‘em’

By TAD BARTIMUS
Fight smart. That was Janet [Chusmir]. No whining, no self pity, no singing of the same old songs. Just buckle down and do it. Once, when I was stymied by an editor who was driving me crazy, I turned to Janet for counsel, knowing I’d get no-frills advice. “Neutralize ’em,” said Janet. “Either neutralize ’em, or get rid of ’ em.” And she was right, of course.
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November 1990

Getting the ‘Young Uns’ to Camp

By ELLEN FAGG
About 30 minutes after giving birth to a healthy baby girl, she called her editor from the hospital bed. She told him she wouldn’t make deadline as she had just delivered her baby. The editor then said (and to quote Dave Barry, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP): “Well, I don’t understand. If it’s over, how come you can’t finish the editorial?”
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August 1990

Coping with Mail Egos Not Easy

By GLENDA HOLSTE
There’s nothing like writing an occasional column from a feminist point of view to energize an astonishing crop of hatemongers. I say astonishing because after years in the comfortable anonymity of a desk editor …
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May 1990

Women Win War Reporting

By EDITH M. LEDERER
When I went to Afghanistan in June 1980, six months after the Soviet intervention, I passed myself off as a carpet buyer with great success. At that time, the idea of a blonde in high heels actually being a foreign correspondent would never have entered the minds of airport immigration officials.
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January 1990

Hazards of ‘Having It All’

By JEANNIE FALKNOR
At work I gave all I had. At home, I gave all I had LEFT. There wasn’t much. First in line for the leftovers was my son. Then my husband a wonderful man who for some strange reason has decided to hang in there for the last 19 years; a full partner in managing our home life. Then, after that, there was me.
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December 1988

Bits

By JEAN GADDY WILSON
Jean Gaddy Wilson suggests that, given the success of the JAWS network for Pam Johnson, the next JAWS gathering include a “wishing session.” People can’t pass on job prospects or knowledge of awards you might shoot for unless they know you might be interested. And the dreams can be dreamed aloud in a way that needn’t necessarily indicate any dissatisfaction with where you are but rather be couched in terms of what you would realistically like to do as your career careens on.
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August 1988

Has the Newspaper Business Changed For Women?

By LINDA MATHEWS
If the standard for promotion becomes “he reminds me of myself when I was young,” then I think women don’t stand much of a chance. We don’t look like our bosses. We don’t talk like them. We don’t dress like them. What are my chances of ever reminding him of himself when he was young? I think that’s the attitude women are up against.
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March 1988

And Away They Go…

By EVIE RAPPORT
It is thrilling to know that, in the cases of Pam and Kay, the network works. Pam’s name was given to the Phoenix paper, which was specifically looking for qualified women, by Jean Gaddy Wilson (another JAWS mother) who knew of her abilities and ambitions. Kay’s name was given by a former colleague to a headhunting agency The P-I was using.
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December 1987

The 12 Steps, Chusmir-Style

By JANET CHUSMIR
I remember an executive editor of the MIAMI HERALD calling me into his office shortly after I became a department head and asking me, ‘How is it that you are not having problems making deadline?’ Evidently he was worried that I would not be able to pull together the edited stories, pictures, headlines and many other elements that go into putting out a page day after day. My answer was, ‘Have you ever had a dinner party for 30 people?’
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Fall 1987

Quibbles and Bits

By KAY MILLS
The LOS ANGELES TIMES has a brand new affirmative action plan, aimed at bringing more women, blacks and Hispanics into middle and upper news management jobs. It was promulgated this spring. The first key appointment made under the plan, a new View editor, is a 31-year-old white male. The department had three female assistant editors. They were not offered the chance to apply. The job was not posted. No women in desk jobs around the paper were approached, as far as we can determine.
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Spring 1987

What? Me Manage?

By PAM JOHNSON
Every time I think of "Women in management" my immediate response is "too few". We are outsiders, bench-warmers, pinch-hiters and will remain on the second string until our numbers are greater in the positions where the policices are made, the politics are played and the allegiances are formed.
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Winter 1986

Untouched by Gentlemen’s Hands

By GLENDA CRANK HOLSTE
The women’s sense of teamwork and power-sharing was so strong that five of us slipped into unfamiliar jobs, and put out three editions without the constant negotiation for viewpoint and power that goes on when men and women work together. There was none of the turf-tromping and posturing that women supervisors deal with when flying solo in a sky of blue button-down oxford cloth shirts. Rule was absolutely, purely by consensus.
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