Ed Werder doesn't like women helping women

I studied at a school most associate with journalism, and it was my experience as well that a number of women are pursuing the profession. Not an overwhelming majority, but a good number.

Still, the number of women pursuing sports journalism is extremely small. In my graduating class that included around 35 aspiring sports print journalists, maybe two or three were women. I'd love to see the number rise, because we need women and their perspectives in the industry. But as I've stated previously, in my experience, it's not as though droves of women pursuing sports journalism from accomplished j-schools are being shut out from the industry. I'd like to hear actual examples of that from those proclaiming otherwise.

 

I believe that this is the most pertinent point in regards to why journalism looks the way it does. I would not still be in this field if I hadn't had a full ride to college. The job is skewed to those already coming from a place of economic security, and as a result you'll frequently see those people being white males. (Which isn't just a journalism problem, but a far great societal issue.)

I will say it's naive to think many people aren't working hard to get minorities a shot in this industry. I've had four separate occasions now in which an editor told me either explicitly or implicitly (and probably illegally) that the upper levels of management didn't give them the OK to fill that opening with a white male. It sucks. But I've also seen the bullshit plenty of talented women in this business have to deal with that I will never have to. They're very much on an island, which is why organizations like AWSM are necessary and why it's silly to take umbrage at what Wilder tweeted.

Speaking from personal experience, when I was the editor at a 15,000-circulation daily for two years, I had only four females apply for openings out of 100+ applications. One I hired as a part-timer, another I would have but she wasn't able to commit to nights because of her college schedule, and a third I was hoping to hire to a full-time spot until she flaked out and never showed for her interview or even called to say why. Still haven't heard back. Ha.

 

If a person didn’t grow up loving sports or playing sports, it’s really hard to decide, at 23, you want to be in sports journalism.

The readers/viewers can see right through it.

 

This is just a weird battle to pick. This is an entry-level job that demands you move to the most expensive city in North America, and I'm guessing the salary is low and they wouldn't help with moving expenses. The only people that will be able to afford this job are 22-year-old trustafarians. That a whole bunch of important capital-J journo-hardo's are arguing on Twitter over whether all 80 billion applicants will get a fair shot at a slightly-better-than-McDonald's-wage job is kind of a microcosm of why this whole industry is in the shape it's in. This is so utterly insane.

 

I should clarify that I'm not talking about sports journalism specifically. I've taught mostly magazine writing or narrative non-fiction classes.

 

It is an odd battle for Werder to wage, which is why I have to believe the issue has been on his mind and Wilder's tweet merely set him off. It's obviously not a popular opinion to share publicly; he probably doesn't care at this point.

 

I've worked for, with and alongside some damn good people over the years, so I'm in full agreement that there needs to be more women and minorities in the biz ...

BUT ... will Wilder feel the same way 10-15 years from now (maybe less) when it could be HER job on the chopping block, to be replaced by some 20-something a year or two out of college?

 

That's a big part of this misunderstanding with Werder. Wilder is 31 years old, I believe, and her career has been a steady-to-meteoric climb in the last few years. Her worries and experiences are not the worries and experiences of an Ed Werder, who probably has kids, a mortgage and god knows what else on his plate. Is that her fault? Nothing she wrote was remotely incendiary; only someone looking to pick a fight would think so.

One of my former colleagues from my newspaper days worked at SI until last year, ran the Faces in the Crowd for years. She was a Columbia J-school grad with years of experience and she got let go. I wonder how she feels about Charlotte Wilder's post. I can't presume to know why she got let go, but she certainly wasn't a loud personality with a big social media presence, which definitely has bolstered Wilder's own career.

 

She's 31? Coulda fooled me, because she tweets like she's 13.

 

She might be a bit younger. But not much from what I could glean from this 2017 interview.

A Q&A with Charlotte Wilder of SB Nation on her climb up the journalism ladder and writing about the “fringes of sports.”

The landscape has changed so much that I don’t know if this career bushwhacking approach would work today, but six years ago it did — based on my blog and freelance work, America’s Test Kitchen hired me as a web editor for its TV show and its two magazines, Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country. I was there for about two years, then Boston.com hired me as a general reporter in 2014. USA TODAY Sports became aware of me and hired me away from Boston.com in March 2016 (when I officially became a sportswriter, I guess), and then SB Nation hired me away from USA TODAY after seven months. I’ve been at SB Nation since November 2016.​

 

I'd say ESPN is doing a great, not decent, job of hiring women. You just mentioned 17 women, including 7 of 13 deputy/senior editors, in high-level editorial positions. That doesn't include the dozens of senior writers, beat reporters and television and radio personalities that are also women. The Ringer, as you mentioned, has hired a number of women in important roles, too, and SI has somehow managed to increase its number of women on staff while barely hiring in recent years.

I think it's fantastic that women are given a shot because, again, they deserve to have the same opportunities as men in this industry. The only issue I have is the belief that women don't in fact have the same opportunities in 2018 as the men. I have yet to see evidence to support that.

 

Imagine the ego one would have to have about their own abilities to swiftly climb an industry's ladder while simultaneously proclaiming publicly that even the best women in said industry are "often" rejected at "every" publication.