By Anne E. Schwartz for WisPolitcs.com   Published Jan 11, 2005 at 5:07 AM

{image1} Women are slowly coming into positions of power in one of the most powerful industries in the world: the news business. It's been happening in newsrooms across the country and now -- like all good things that seem to get here last -- it's making its way to Wisconsin.

Ever since women won the right to vote in 1920, and long before that, they have changed the culture; they have changed the story. So it's only right that women should have a seat at the table when newsmakers decide what matters, what's important enough to garner the front page and the lead slot in newspapers and newscasts.

About 20 percent of newspaper editors in this country are women -- more than any other time in history. Elizabeth "Betsy " Brenner is joining their ranks as the first female publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in the state. Just last year, Ellen Foley became the first woman managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal.

Leaders of news organization bring their own perspective to the table. Brenner, 50, comes with her own perspective, as well. She will take her seat at the Journal Sentinel as a breast cancer survivor and as a woman who promised her former housekeeper who was dying of cancer that Brenner and her husband would care for the woman's two daughters. She honored that promise and raised the girls for four years.

Brenner brings a wealth of human experience to the business of newsgathering, and it's crucial that women with experiences vastly different than those of men be in the room when decisions are being made -- whether it's the newsroom or the boardroom. Women make up more than half of society -- more than half the electorate. They are, for the most part, lamentably absent from the decision-making.

Send a man and a woman to cover the same story and the stories will be different. Send a white reporter and a black reporter, and those too will differ. Were it not for women reporters, the story of Geraldine Ferraro as the country's first female vice presidential candidate would have been markedly different. It was the women in the newsrooms who piped up and said, "If we're going to write about what she's wearing, we better write about what Mondale's wearing."

In 1991, women in newsrooms across the country didn't fall to the floor in a dead faint when they found out there was sexual harassment in the workplace, highlighted by Anita Hill and her accusations against U.S. Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas. When National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg was preparing to break the story, she said male U.S. senators told her that it was no big deal. Women like Totenberg could identify with the issue, as could many female reporters, and the reporting was better for it.

Diversity in the newsroom -- not just in race, but in gender -- is vital as the news business changes with society. When 73-year-old Dan Rather steps down as the longtime CBS prime time news anchor, many are looking for the network to replace him with a woman. Carole Simpson, the first African-American woman network anchor on ABC News, said recently she can't believe that in this day and age, three white men are the prime time anchors of the big three network news programs.

Newsrooms have been traditional male bastions, and when women became reporters, their goal was to be just as macho and they didn't want to stand out. They were war correspondents and some died doing their jobs silently.

But eventually, women started making some noise. Former United Press International correspondent Helen Thomas broke down many of the closed doors: the revered National Press Club, the Gridiron Club and the elite House press corps. It wasn't until 1971 that women were allowed to be members of the National Press Club.

Newsweek columnist and author Anna Quindlen likes to say she writes flagrantly female. She had to when she started in the late 1970s. Women's issues were cutting edge in the 20th century -- abortion, childcare and sexual harassment -- and it took women to bring them to the forefront in newsroom discussions.

Geneva Overholser helped the Des Moines Register win a coveted Pulitzer Prize when she pointed out from her seat as the first woman in the Op-Ed pages society's failure to focus on the effect of the crime of rape by not naming the victims in news stories. A woman came forward, inspired by the piece and told her story, complete with her name and photograph.

More than half the population of this country is female, yet white men are making the decisions in newsrooms and boardrooms. Upper middle class, middle-aged white men. The debate is not about man bashing, it's about having people bring an opinion that comes from another place. We should strive to get to the place when women in power aren't front-page news.

Anne E. Schwartz is a Milwaukee-area author and journalist. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at Carroll College in Waukesha. She was the first female managing editor of the Waukesha Freeman.)

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of OnMilwaukee.com, its advertisers or editorial staff.

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