A story passed on by the Jender-Parents…
According to the soon to be gone Editor & Publisher, three of the top 20 circulation papers’ five female editors will be leaving their jobs, all within a few weeks of each other…
Nancy Barnes, Star Tribune editor and one of the two remaining females in the position, offers a familiar explanation:
“It is a brutal business for women, particularly women who want to have a family,” she says. “There are just different choices you have to make.
Yup, surely that must be right. That’s what it always is, isn’t it? There’s just one teeny difficulty this time:
Of the three women leaving, two are in their 60′s and retiring. The third, only 46, is planning to pursue a different avenue in journalism, as well as move closer to her husband.
What’s the teeny difficulty? Barnes doesn’t appear to have been trying to explain the departure of those three particular women in that way. (Generally, you wouldn’t expect many top female editors to depart to start a family anyway, because the age range in which you reach the top of the newspaper field is not usually the prime age range for starting a family.)
Obviously, Barnes’ comment goes more toward a partial explanation for why there are only 5 female editors at the top 20 circulation papers in the first place (which is why the departure of three of them is a shame). And she’s probably right, isn’t she?
You know, Nemo, that reading occurred to me in the middle of the night. Sigh.