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Earlier WIFP Associate News
to WIFP Associate News Main Page
Earlier Associate News:
* Maurine Beasley, Danna L. Walker, Nora Massignotti-Cortese, Carolyn M. Byerly, Ruth Gottstein, Ariel Dougherty, Erin Conroy, Rev. Cheryl Cornish, Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, JoAnn Huff Albers, Michael Honey, Calandria Somuah, Mal Johnson, Jan Zimmerman, Danna Walker, Carolyn M. Byerly, Kimberlie Kranich, Gertrude Robinson, Joy Simonson, Jo Freeman, Senay Ozdemir,Jin-A Yang, Haruko Watanabe, Margaret Johnston, Robin Morgan, Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, Natalie Hopkinson, Frankie Hutton, Ariel Dougherty, Carolyn M. Byerly, Maurine Beasley, Dorothy Dean, Shere Hite, Dr. Sue Kaufman, Elayne Clift, Haruko Watanabe, Leila Merl, Peg Johnston, Nikki Craft, Frieda Werden, Robin Morgan, Andrea Dworkin, Jo Campbell, Mary Gehman, Anne Braden, Sarah Misailidis.
Earlier Associate News
Dr. Maurine Beasley
Maurine Beasley will be honored with the prestigious Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication conference in Chicago this August. The Blum Award recognizes an individual for research that has been of service to journalism education. This is an extremely competitive award for which 22 people nominated Beasley.
Maurine Beasley credits Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism, based on the book Women in Media: A Documentary Source Book, which was originally published by WIFP, as a significant factor in her receipt of the award. Beasley will be recognized for the award at a special panel presentation, at which time she will be making remarks, and will be sure to credit WIFP founder Dr. Donna Allen with being a major inspiration to her.
Beasley has also officially retired, and now serves as the first Professor Emerita of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. She will continue to advise Ph.D. students in her new capacity. Beasley also has contracts with academic presses for two books, one on Eleanor Roosevelt as a politician in the White House and one on the history of Washington women journalists.
Danna L. Walker, Ph.D., continues in her role as the James B. Simpson Fellow at American University. She was a panelist at the International Communication Association conference in Montreal in May and will be a panelist at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Chicago in August. She has been awarded a grant through the WIFP to continue research into the relationship between women and news in shaping society since the Second Wave of the Women's Movement.
Great news from Nora Massignotti-Cortese. She has had much of her art published and she is the winner of Cure Magazine 2008 Extraordinary Healer Art Competition. Most recently the Cancer Society printed two posters of her paintings and a calendar of the Oncology Society will be out in 2009. Also We Moon will publish a 2010 appointment book of one of her paintings.
Dr. Carolyn M. Byerly
In April 2008, Carolyn Byerly was one of four recipients of the “Outstanding Faculty of the Year” Honors & Excellence Award 2008, from the Graduate Student Association, Howard University.
In June 2008, she assumed the role of principal investigator for a "Global Report on Women's Media Employment," for the Washington, DC-based International Women's Media Foundation. The two-year project will update Margaret Gallagher's 1995 report for Unesco titled "An Unfinished Story." The present project refines Gallagher's methodology and geographic distribution, in its quest to learn what kind of positions women occupy within print, broadcast, cable, and some online media companies around the world.
In August 2008, Dr. Byerly completes a year-long training and mentorship called Journalism (and Mass Comm) Leadership Diversity (JLID), a program sponsored by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). JLID prepares women and minorities in the field to prepare for administrative and other leadership positions in the academic world.
Ruth Gottstein, Publisher Emerita of Volcano Press (www.volcanopress.com), is a plenary speaker at the 30th anniversary of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, describing some of the "the early, grass roots days of the battered women's movement."
Volcano Press (www.volcanopress.com) first published "Lesbian/Woman" (1972) by Martin and Lyon, and "Battered Wives" (1976) by Del Martin. Her son, Adam Gottstein, is carrying on her work with Volcano Press as the publisher for over 6 years now, during which time they've eleased "Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Women Who Broke Free", by Elaine Weiss (2004) and "Family and Friends' Guide to Domestic Violence: How to Listen, Talk, and Take Action When Someone You Care About is Being Abused" (2003). Both books received starred reviews for core collections from Library Journal. In 2006, we published "The Physician's Guide to Intimate Parner Violence and Abuse: A Reference for all Health Care Professionals: How to Ask the Right Questions and Recognize Abuse...Another Way to Save a Life", an update from a similar title we first published in 1995. The co-editors are Patricia Salber, MD, and Ellen Taliaferro, MD. They've also published a compendium from UC Davis called "Child Abuse and Neglect" with contributions from 95 professionals.
Ariel Dougherty will be serving as the Senior Research Consultant and coordinator of ‘Creating a Women’s Media Equity Collaborative: New Funding Models for Feminist Media. With this research, a collaboration of academics and media organization activists will conduct the first-ever survey of the field of women’s media justice organizations. Furthermore, the project will map out feminist models of collaboration and sustainable funding to design a new support arm for the collective work of feminist media organizations.
The two academic investigators of the Women’s Media Equity Collaborative are Lisa McLaughlin, in communications at Miami University of Ohio and editor of Feminist Media Studies, and Susan Feiner, an economist and director of Women Studies at Maine Southern University. The partnering organizations are “Making Contact”/National Radio Project under executive director Lisa Rudman and Chica Luna Productions under acting director Lillian Jimenez and Program Coordinator Karly Beaumont. The research is funded by a grant from the Social Science Research Council through their Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere program.
In another capacity, as associate producer for Lynn Hershman’s Women, Art and Revolution, a documentary on the Feminist Art Movement, Ariel Dougherty was able to facilitate a single $100,000 contribution. This has allowed editing to proceed in earnest, moving forward this important and lively memoir.
For the past year, Ariel Dougherty has also been involved with the Women’s Working Group (WWG), which shepherded the involvement of some 150 grassroots and national women’s organizations within the US Social Forum. She has just accepted the co-coordination of the Leadership Circle of WWG as it continues to oversee a number of collective feminist initiatives and strategize plans for the 2010 US Social Forum.
Erin Conroy, a former WIFP intern, is currently in Thailand on an undergraduate research award, researching the sexual trafficking of women and children in that country. The culmination of this trip will be a report on her findings that will appear in the International Museum of Women’s online exhibition on human trafficking in November.
Erin is also launching LOTUS magazine, the premier issue of which will be published in September of this year. LOTUS is described as “a publication focusing on global women’s issues such as: traveling, women in the workplace, spirituality, violence against women, women and international development, and women and the environment. Ultimately, the main purpose of LOTUS magazine is to offer a socially-conscious publication dedicated to the enlightenment of women around the globe” (http://lotusmagazine.org).
The idea for LOTUS stemmed from the dissatisfaction that Erin and her co-editors, Sara Lehman and Amber McCrady, felt about the current selection and topics covered in magazines widely available to and geared toward women today. In contrast, Lotus magazine is devoted to helping women “change the world, instead of to change our bodies” (http://lotusmagazine.org) and hopes to improve the world for women by exploring the social injustice that they suffer.
We are excited to announce that Rev. Cheryl Cornish has been chosen to receive the 2008 Yale Divinity School Alumni Award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry. Past recipients of recognition from the school include U.S. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), the late civil rights and antiwar activist Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Scott Morris, director of the Church Health Center of Memphis.
Rev. Cornish has been leading her First Congregational Church community in Memphis, Tennessee, for 20 years, building it up from a small, predominantly elderly congregation to it's current 320-member diverse group that includes gay, lesbian, straight and disabled worshipers. Speaking from personal experience, she delivers moving and inspirational sermons. She also does not shy from taking on justice and peace issues. For instance, every Wednesday she joins Women in Black on the church steps to protest the war. She identifies herself as a feminist and activist as well as a pastor.
An article about her Yale Divinity School Award and the great work she is doing appeared in the Commercial Appeal: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jun/19/mission-of-inclusiveness/
Congratulations, Cheryl, on a well-deserved award!
An article from the Yale Divinity School website:
The Alumni Awards for Distinction in Congregational Ministry
Cheryl Cornish ’83 M.Div.
Memphis, TN
In 1988 Cheryl Cornish arrived at the First Congregational Church (UCC) in Memphis, TN, which was averaging Sunday attendance of about 20. Two decades later, Cornish is still senior minister there, but the church transformed dramatically under her leadership— demonstrated by a ten-fold increase in average worship attendance and church giving that grows at about 24 percent annually.
Remarkably, this transformation occurred in conservative Memphis even as Cornish was leading her congregation to become open and affirming, adopt inclusive language in all phases of church life, and declare itself a “Just Peace” congregation. So effective has been Cornish’s leadership that, by 2000, the congregation had outgrown its historic sanctuary in one of Memphis’s affluent neighborhoods. The church left its comfortable surroundings to take up residence in a huge church in Memphis’s urban area, blossoming into a “home” for a long list of non-profits that help make the church a center of peace and justice in the community.
Untraditional approaches are a part of Cornish’s repertoire. Eager to educate the Memphis community about the mainly northern United Church of Christ, she organized “Pilgrim” services at the church, held annually on the day before Thanksgiving. Prior to the first Pilgrim service, she ran ads in the local papers and even showed up, dressed as a Pilgrim, at a 6:00 a.m. interview at the local television station.
Over time, many came to appreciate the church as one that unashamedly hews to its progressive Congregationalist heritage. As others churches fled midtown Memphis, First Congregational threw its support behind Lemoyne-Owen College, a struggling historically black college in the inner city; as other churches condemned gays, First Congregational declared itself open and affirming; while other churches lobbied to close Planned Parenthood, First Congregational held rallies for organizations that support reproductive rights for women.
Prior to her arrival at First Congregational, Cornish was pastor of Ebenezer United Church of Christ in Augusta, MO and ministerial consultant to the St. Charles Women’s Center in Augusta. After graduating from Williams College and then YDS, she was a lecturer/consultant at the Women’s Theological Institute in Lincoln, NE and served internships at churches in Lincoln and Waterbury, CT.
In Memphis, she has served on numerous boards, including those of Lemoyne-Owen College, the Memphis Interfaith Association, the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, and the Mid-South Interfaith Coalition for Economic Justice.
Cornish is married to carpenter and flamenco guitarist Mark Allen.
Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Dr Carolyn Bennett, author of Missing News & Views in Paranoid Times, has come out with another book! Women's Work and Works, Altering World Order, Alternatives to Spin and Inhumanity of Men was just released (2008).
In her introduction, Carolyn wrote: "The seed grew in the 1980s when a friend and founder of the Washington-based Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press said to me in one of many formal and informal talks that people who are wrongheaded or misguided in their actions are not bad people; they just don't have 'my information.' Dr. Donna Allen also said if you believe important information or history is missing from the public debate, you have a responsibility to supply that information. Indeed, Women's Work and Words has intended to do that."
A review of Women's Work and Words, Altering World Order appears on this website.
JoAnn Huff Albers
Although JoAnn Albers is officially retired, she is till making talks for journalism education programs. She recently spoke, for instance, at the Kentucky Press Association journalism boot camp in Frankfort. She remains active in professional organizations and is attending the Unity 2008 conference (July). She returned to the Cincinnati area to live, after having left it 27 years ago to become a newspaper editor/publisher in Michigan.
JoAnn Huff Albers has donated her papers to the Women and Media Collection (NWMC) in Columbia, Missouri. Albers is director of the School of Journalism and Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University and has served in numerous positions with media educational organizations, including a term as president of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, the second woman to hold the position. Albers's papers document her involvement in many professional organizations such as the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications and Women in Communication.
Dr. Michael Honey
Michael Honey, Professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma, has received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for his book documenting the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike and Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in Memphis, Tenn. Honey and his book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, was recognized at a ceremony in May at the Newseum in Washington, DC., given by the Robert F. Kennedy's concern for the oppressed and their struggle for justice.
Honey was also the winner of the 2008 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for his book Going Down Jericho Road. Previously Honey came to Washington to speak on March 31 at the AFL-CIO.
Mike Honey's presentation 
The book, Going Down Jericho Road, is a narrative of one of the most important and least told stories of the civil rights movement discusses the ways that the mass media distorted, inflamed, or ignored black labor and civil rights issues, leading to the 1968 strike in which Dr. King was murdered. The book traces how the African-American community created its own media through mass meeting, the black church, and the mass movement, finally changing the plantation mentality that ruled Memphis.
This account is a riveting, thorough, fascinating story that weaves history, politics, and social justice issues together seamlessly. It is the story of Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights struggle was focused on Dr. Martin Luther King and the sanitation workers who undertook a courageous strike due to dire conditions. It tells of those who worked hard to improve conditions and bring about justice, and those whose lives were affected. It is not the usual history of the top down. A refreshing account that seeks to bring hope and light to the events and conditions facing workers in Memphis, the over 500 pages keeps you pulled in. This is the way history should be told. (W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 2007)
Mike Honey came to Washington, DC and spoke at the Library of Congress and at Busboys and Poets on May 15, 2007.
Photo by Zenia Allen Zeitlin
Michael Honey's earlier books include Black Workers Remember, An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle, (University of California Press, 1999) and Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, Organizing Memphis Workers, (University of Illinois Press, 1993).
For Honey's 18-minute film, A Soldier's Duty?, on Lt. Ehren Watada's challenge to President Bush's Iraq occupation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ9sV3Nmwpg
Michael Honey, Professor, African-American, Ethnic and Labor Studies and American History, University of Washington, Tacoma, 1900 Commerce St., Tacoma, WA 98402.
Calandria Somuah
Calandria Somuah is freelancing for a local newspaper, The Sentinel. She plans on attending Georgtown University School of Coninuing Studies for journalism in Spring 2009. She will also make another trip to Japan next year.
Mal Johnson
We are sad that Mal Johnson is no longer with us but I can't help remember how she used to speak of all the great women who went on to "feminist heaven." Well that certainly would be where Mal is right now.
The Life of Mal Johnson Celebrated: A Tribute and Memorial to Her Life and Accomplishments
November 30, 2007
National Press Club
First Amendment Lounge
Washington, D.C.
Mal Johnson began her career as a television reporter at the former WKBS-TV in Philadelphia. The first female reporter hired by Cox Radio and Television News, she moved to Washington and traveled the world over the course of her 27 years with the company.
As Cox’s White House correspondent, Mal covered five presidents, Capitol Hill, the State Department and various federal agencies. Upon her retirement, Mal established a consulting firm, Medialinx International.
Mal dedicated her time to women's rights, and freedom of expression in the United States and around the world. She served on many boards, including all of the host organizations. She was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Host Organizations:
National Council of Women’s Organizations
Communications Consortium Media Center
U.S. Committee for UNIFEM
International Association of Women in Radio and Television
__________
The following is a release from the National Council of Women's Organizations where Mal was very in recent years. They have set up a "Sistership Program" in her honor.
NCWO Mourns the Loss of Pioneering Journalist and Feminist Leader Mal Johnson
October 30, 2007, Washington, DC – The National Council of Women’s Organizations is deeply saddened by the passing of Mal Johnson on Sunday, October 28. Ms. Johnson served on NCWO’s Executive Committee and chaired its Global Issues Task Force, where she was an exceptionally effective liaison for women’s rights to embassies from around the world. Ms. Johnson also edited NCWO’s recent publication, 50 Ways to Improve Women’s Lives: The Essential Women’s Guide to Achieving Equality, Health and Success.
Mal Johnson began her career as a television reporter at the former WKBS in Philadelphia. The first female reporter hired by Cox Radio and Television News, she moved to Washington and traveled the world over the course of her 27 years there. As Cox’s White House correspondent, Ms. Johnson covered five presidents as well as Capitol Hill, the State Department, and various Federal agencies. In 1980, she was promoted to Senior Washington Correspondent and assigned additional duties as National Director of Community Affairs.
In addition to her leadership role at the National Council, Ms. Johnson served on many boards, including the International Association of Women in Radio & Television and the Communications Consortium Media Center. She was a founding member of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, and the National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs. She is the former National Chair of the American Women in Radio and Television Foundation. Inducted into the Journalists Hall of Fame in 2000, a television documentary of her life is in the archives of the History Makers of America. Upon her retirement, Ms. Johnson established a consulting firm, Medialinx International, and pursued a career as a volunteer leader for women’s rights, especially for women of color and international women.
NCWO Chair Susan Scanlan noted that, “The National Council of Women’s Organizations—and the world—has lost an important piece of our history. Even as an octogenarian and challenged by illness, Mal never retired from the fight for feminism and fairness. She was a dignified and forceful leader who inspired so many young women, especially women of color. For that reason, we are pleased to announce the creation of the Mal Johnson Sistership Program to provide a paid fellowship, or “sistership,” for young women of color at NCWO. How proud and delighted Mal would be to hand a deserving young woman the opportunity to participate in public policymaking at its source!”
Thanks go to Ms. Johnson’s many friends, especially Tesa Leon, for suggesting this leadership development initiative in her honor. More information on NCWO’s Mal Johnson Sistership Program will be provided at an upcoming press conference and memorial ceremony to be announced soon.
####
The National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition of more than 230 women's organizations across the nation collectively representing over eleven million women. Since 1983, NCWO has convened the leadership of major women's organizations dedicated to focusing on national and international issues and public policy agendas affecting women and girls.
Jan Zimmerman
Jan Zimmerman, WIFP Associate since 1977, is the author of the book Web Marketing For Dummies. To purchase a copy, go to http://www.watermelonweb.com/book.htm, or to your favorite independent bookstore.
Jan is the owner of Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing " one of the very few Internet marketing companies with solid grounding in the basics of running a profitable business, from strategic planning to Web policy development." See http://www.watermelonweb.com/index.html
About Web Marketing For Dummies:
Develop a plan, build a marketing-effective site, and create word-of-Web campaigns. Launching a Web site for your product or service does not automatically ensure sales success. This book provides the know-how for creating a solid Web marketing plan, including how to build a site that draws and keeps visitors. Then add proven strategies like search engine optimization and link campaigns, and measure your results. Successful Web marketing techniques — all within your budget. Discover how to:
Make your site search engine friendly
Close a sale on your site
Drive traffic to your site
Create an online marketing plan
Take advantage of guerilla marketing
Maximize your marketing dollars
Dr. Danna Walker
Danna Walker published an article in the Spring 2007 issue of American Journalism, A Journal of Media History entitled "They Had a Satellite and They Knew How to Use It: How Donna Allen Led Women to the Forefront of the Technological Revolution in Communication." Danna Walker is still at CBS and teaching at American University. She is an adjunct associate professor in residence and the James B. Simpson Fellow in the School of Communication at American University.
Dr. Carolyn M. Byerly
Carolyn M. Byerly, Howard University's Department of Journalism, received a grant in the amount of $8,150 in June 2007 from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, to conduct a baseline study on women owners of broadcast stations in the United States. The funds are derived from the Carnegie-Knight Foundation.
Carolyn M. Byerly has been tenured at the rank of associate professor in the Department of Journalism, John H. Johnson School of Communications, Howard University, Washington, DC. She joined the Howard faculty in 2004. She teaches graduate-level courses in mass communication theory, research methods, media effects, political communication, and research writing. She completed her MA and PhD degrees at the University of Washington, Seattle, and her BS at University of Colorado.
Kimberlie Kranich
Kimberlie Kranich, board member and Associate of WIFP, launched her blogging adventures in July 2007. Entitled "How Big My Human Heart Can Get," her blog details experiences in which she learns kindness, generosity and inner serenity from her personal relationships and lessons from others. Kimberlie's blog can be viewed at http://howbigmyhumanheartcanget.blogspot.com/.
Dr. Gertrude Robinson
Gertrude J. Robinson is an emeritus professor and past director of the Graduate Program in Communications at McGill University, Montreal where she was involved in the institutionalization of the Canadian field. At McGill she helped set up the first Canadian Ph.D.; then became the first female president of the Canadian Communication Association and subsequently the first female editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication.
Robinson received a BA "magna cum laude" in philosophy and political science from Swarthmore College, an MA in philosophy from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
Honors and awards include: Phi Beta Kappa, Kappa Tau Alpha, Dodi Robb Award (Media Watch); Canadian Who's Who (1998); Dictionary of International Biography (Cambridge 26th Ed); YWCA Women of the Year Award in Communication (2001); Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award , ICA (2004).
Robinson has published nine books and more than fifty articles in national and international journals. They include: Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices (1998); Women and Power: Canadian & German Experiences (1990); News Agencies and World News: Methods and Data (1981) and Tito's Maverick Media: The Politics of Mass Communication in Yugoslavia (1977).
Joy Simonson
Joy Simonson, 1919 - 2007
WIFP Associate Joy Simonson died June 24th. This is a notice from the National Council of Women's Organizations in which she was active.:
The National Council of Women’s Organizations salutes one of our own: Joy Simonson, feminist foremother, educational equity pioneer, and former NCWO steering committee member, who died on June 24th at age 87.
Joy was a fearless fighter for women’s rights, particularly on behalf of Title IX. She served as executive director of the National Advisory Council on Women's Educational Programs (NAWEP) from 1975 to 1982, preparing some of the first reports on women's studies, sexual harassment, and the first edition of the Handbook for Achieving Sex Equity through Education. NAWEP was a Presidentially-appointed body that advised Congress and federal officials on educational equity for women and girls. In 1982, Reagan appointees to the Council removed Ms. Simonson from her position because of her support for the Equal Rights Amendment. Her firing became a cause celebre and a rallying cry for the women's movement.
A proud graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Joy Simonson served as chairman of the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board from 1964 to 1972, the first woman to hold that position; chief hearing examiner for the D.C. Rent Commission; Assistant Director of the Federal Women's Program of the U.S. Civil Service Commission; president of the D.C. League of Women Voters; vice president of Executive Women in Government; and was the founder of the D.C. Commission for Women. From 1982 to 1990, she worked as an oversight investigator for the House Employment and Housing Subcommittee. She covered such issues as occupational safety and health, child labor, and delays by the EEOC in process-ing age discrimination cases. At her retirement, Joy was the oldest staff member in the House of Representatives.In 1992, Joy was elected to the District of Columbia Women's Hall of Fame.
Many of us remember how Joy, a tiny woman with perfect posture, was always the most meticulously attired person in any room. She was one of the stalwarts we counted on: she never turned down a request to speak, always showed up for every meeting; enthusiastically promoted the work of her own and other organizations; and was a thoughtful and generous friend to generations of feminists.There will be a memorial service for Joy Simonson on July 22 at the Women's National Democratic Club in Washington DC. Her daughter and sons have asked that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Older Women’s League (OWL), where Joy was a long and devoted Board member.
"The Women Who Ran for President" is now on Jo Freeman's website: http://www.jofreeman.com/politics/womprez03.htm
Be sure to take a look.
Senay Ozdemir
Senay Ozdemir, WIFP Associate who joined us in 2007, is the Editor in Chief and founder of SEN Magazine, a magazine that advocates for young women of Islamic background living in the Netherlands. SEN Magazine, which Ozdemir founded in March 2004, features successful Mediterranean women such as lawyers, artists, engineers, and businesswomen as well an advice column, which contains very serious and modern concerns of Mediterranean Islamic women. Seven months after it was launched, SEN was elected "Best New Magazine of 2004" by De Volkskrant, one of the leading newspapers in the Netherlands. By 2005, SEN's monthly circulation reached 20,000 issues, and in 2006 the magazine expanded into Belgium. The magazine made the switch from print to an entirely online publication in January 2007 and can be accessed at www.senmagazine.com. The content of the website is primarily in Dutch.
Senay Ozdemir is a former television producer and presenter. She founded Medusa Media productions in 2003 and was a columnist for several women's magazines. She now manages the staff of editors, directors, designers, photographers and writers.
Jin-A Yang
Jin-A has been to Cambodia on a project working toward the eradication of illiteracy. Her organization began a small library project in three countries: Nepal, Cambodia and Russia. She has been very interested in improving conditions in developing countries. This year Jin-A has returned to school doing graduate work in public policy. Even though it is always a challenge to study and work together, she is enjoys studying again.
Haruko Watanabe
Haruko Watanabe said she is enjoying the busiest time of her life as a journalist. For the past decade, she has covered both press and social functions as both vice president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) and as a chairperson of its various committees. In her current position of Chairperson of the Special Project Committee, Wantanabe organizes press tours and theater visits to help correspondents find feature story material in and out of Tokyo.
Watanabe also writes two columns published on the Web site for Rosettastone Magazine, “From the Window of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club,” and “I Love Ballet and Musicals.” She said that her articles are well-received by readers who want more than straight reporting and/or theater reviews.
As the president of House of World Cultures (HKW), Watanabe has been organizing media dinners as follow-ups to media seminars of the 2000 Japan Global Forum in New York. She also writes for Media Report to Women (MRTW) as a Tokyo correspondent. An article she wrote about the Tokyo International Women’s Film Festival will be published in the next issue of MRTW.
Margaret Johnston
Margaret Johnston’s work is featured in a new book by Krista Jacob, “Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges of Facing Choice.” Jacob, a 10-year counselor to victims of rape and domestic violence, discusses the imminent extinction of nationwide abortion rights. She shows how abortion rights are closely entwined with political issues like minimum wage, affordable healthcare, education, birth control methods, religion and basic human rights. The perspectives in the book illustrate that human thoughts and emotions have multiple dimensions, even if there may only be two sides to the same coin.
Johnston titled her essay, “We Have Met the Enemy, and He/She is Us,” after the famous Walt Kelly Pogo cartoon. She writes that each person can make some shifts that will greatly de-stigmatize abortion. She reframes the abortion experience as “lucky” in the wisdom about life that it has the potential to bring to one’s consciousness. Along with Johnston’s essay, Jacob’s book also features articles from Amy Richards, Jennifer Baumgardner, Rebecca Traister, Frances Kissling and Gloria Feldt. You can view and purchase “Abortion Under Attack” at http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781580051859&itm=1
Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan has a Dec. 20, 2007 article entitled "The Four Solstice Miracles" on the Women's Media Center website. Go to: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/122007.html
Robin Morgan has another book out: FiGHTING WORDS: A ToolKit for Combating the Religious Right (Nation Books/Avalon Publishing, 2006).
Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Carolyn Bennett has come out with another important book: Missing News and Views In Paranoid Times.
Missing News and Views in Paranoid Times opens minds to new perspectives on current affairs and world events -- people, politics, peace and the press. This anthology features coverage of international issues, events, people and politics -- against the backdrop of Middle East war, and through a lens censored in mainstream news and current affairs coverage. The in-depth stories and analyses comprise three years of Bennett’s hard-hitting, sometimes humorous prose, sometimes a poet’s pain, never manipulative, never inspiring pity or cheap sentiment. Paranoid Times is a magazine of sources never quoted, faces never seen, voices rarely heard, analyses with irony and juxtaposition all tied to current affairs, politics and controversy. A wide audience of readers – including students, journalists, analysts, educators, politicians – will find Missing News and Views In Paranoid Times a deeply informative, compelling and striking read. In Paranoid Times invites readers to shed the paranoia and understand current events with this independently-voiced, thought-provoking exposé.
(www.xlibris.com/INPARANOIDTIMES.html or www.xlibris.com/bookstore)
ISBN: 1-59926-487-0 (Trade Paperback)
Pages: 336
Natalie Hopkinson
Natalie Hopkinson has authored a book published with Cleis Press, along with co-author Natalie Moore. Be sure see her blog: http://deconstructing-tyrone.blogspot.com/
Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Post (on leave) and a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Maryland–College Park. She had a great article in the Washington Post titled "The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up It's Sons," October 18, 2006, on the front page of the Style section.
DECONSTRUCTING TYRONE
In "Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation," (Cleis Press, October, 2006) authors Natalie Hopkinson and Natalie Y. Moore dissect the public and private lives of Detroit’s “Hip-Hop Mayor” NBA poet Etan Thomas, political prisoner Debo Ajabu, and relationships between babydaddy and babymomma, strippers and their dads, and men on the so-called “Down Low,” through the media lens, through stereotype, through the eyes of Black women.
Frankie Hutton, Ph.D.
Dr. Frankie Hutton was faculty in April 2006 a the Salzburg Seminar in Austria for a special International Study Program (ISP) devoted to the topic Global Citizenship. There she joined a cast of international faculty in contrast to having been a fellow at Salzburg in 1999 for an intensive week-long Salzburg Seminar group known as Session 372: Race and Ethnicity: Social Change through Public Awareness.
Frankie recently published a journal article on Evelyn Cunningham's 1940s work as a columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier in ANALES DEL MUSEO NACIONAL DE ANTROPOLOGIA, Numero X 2004, Madrid, Spain.
Ariel Dougherty
"It is so great to 'come home' to wifp.org and learn what sister associates are doing!! And it is A LOT! For many years I have not been active with media, but late Winter with confirmation of Alito to the Supreme Court and passage of a proposed abortion ban in SD, I got angry. So, via the www I have been networking with old friends, and new ones.
"Almost forty years now since the initial roots of launching Women Make Movies (citywide women's liberation meetings in New York City, Fall 1969), and I look at the televisionscape ---- 16,800 [100chx24/7] hours of TV a week, and not one consistent hour devoted to feminist issues! Yet, we are on the cusp of another phenomenal technological change, with more and more moving images becoming accessible to a huge global audience via the web. I linked up with sister associate Frieda Werden. We have had a fast and furious discussion about 'the state of feminist media' and what some next steps might be to build on existing structures. Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Third World Majority (www.cultureisaweapon.org/) is launching a new digital movie teaching program for women in social justice work. After this Summer's initial program in the Bay Area, she is taking it on the road, nationally. In San Diego, an on-going girls media teaching program is run by San Diego Women in Film Foundation. They also hold a great annual Women Film Festival, for women of all ages. In fact, in the past ten years there has been a burst of women's film festivals, still the key entry point for women media makers to reach an audience. My old stomping grounds of Women Make Movies are thriving. The Ex Dir there recently told me they have a record number of films making it to TV. That's great! Me, I just would love to see a feminist weekly version of Democracy Now! A place of our own to check in and learn some of all the great things women are doing across the globe!! Or, something on the web!! Any ideas?? Want to assist?? ArielCamera At gmail.com."
Dr. Carolyn M. Byerly
Dr. Carolyn M. Byerly, an Associate Professor in Howard University’s JHJ School of Communications, has recently been involved in two studies about media ownership of women and minorities. Byerly discusses these studies and posts other recent studies of media ownership on her blog at http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=302. The studies were planned to be released around Oct. 23, the end of the FCC’s public comment period on media ownership. In one of Byerly’s studies, she analyzed the 2005 media ownership data released by the FCC. Of her results, she found that female and minority ownership is fewer than 5 percent, and that 75 percent of women-owned stations are actually owned by both men and women. In her second study, she and two others interviewed about 200 minority residents of Washington, DC about how they view news content, where they get their news and if the news affects their level of community participation. Byerly writes that the news did not help most participants understand crime, the rising costs of living and other problems they face daily. She will continue to write about updates of media ownership.
Dr. Maurine Beasley
Dr. Beasley has a recent book, First Ladies and the Press: The Unfinished Partnership of the Media Age, published by Northwestern University Press in 2005 (see the review in Voices for Media Democracy).
She was invited to be a participant in the 3rd international conference of women leaders in higher education at the Chinese Communication University in Beijing August 15-24, 2006. She presented a paper on gender and media studies in the U.S.A.
Dorothy Dean
Dorothy Dean recently developed the website for the Milwaukee chapter of the League of Women Voters (lwv.milwaukee.org). She is currently serving as treasurer for Broad Universe, an international organization dedicated to promoting women's writing in the category of science fiction, fantasy and horror. It began in response to the lack of women in the science fiction gnere who receive awards or are published or reviewed. The organization, though small, is active at science fiction conventions all over the globe, with members in the UK, Australia, Spain, Mexico, New Zealand, and the US. For more information, visit broaduniverse.org.
Shere Hite
Shere Hite, best known for her earlier series of Hite Reports, has published several books in Europe where she now lives, and this year has published The Shere Hite Reader: Globalisation and Private Life with Seven Stories Press in New York, appearing on The Colbert Report television program in May 2006 as well as USA Today. She has also published Oedipus Revisited, a book based on her research, about boys with a UK publisher, Arcadia Books, and Cartas de Jovenes Lectores with La Esfera de Los Libros publishing house in Spain. She can be reached at hite2000@hotmail.com.
Dr. Sue Kaufman
I’ve just been re-elected to a 2nd 3-year-term as President of University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100, IFT/AFT/AFL-CIO. We collectively bargain for faculty and staff at seven public universities in Illinois. And, I continue to teach a senior-seminar Fall, Spring and Summer as a member of the journalism faculty at Eastern Illinois University. Sitting on the Higher Education Program and Policy Council of the American Federation of Teachers, and as a Vice President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers keeps me very busy.
Elayne Clift
Elayne Clift recently returned from a year in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she taught at Payap University. Her book on the experience, Ajahn: A Year of Teaching in Thailand is under consideration by Silkwork Books (Asia).
On September 5, University Press of New England/Tufts U. published Women, Philanthropy, and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society, a work she conceived and edited. Each chapter is authored by a leader of the W&P movement. It has been called the definitive book on the subject.
She is also at work editing her first novel, Hester's Daughters, a contemporary feminist retelling of The Scarlet Letter. She has an agent interested, but currently no publisher.
Elayne Clift continues to act as a Senior Correspondent for Women's Feature Service and as a columnist for the Keene (NH) Sentinel. She also works as a freelance writer and an adjunct professor.
Haruko Watanabe
Haruko Watanabe continues to write articles concerning women in the Japanese media.
Leila Merl
" I am teaching English at Needham High School (in Massachusetts), and although I cannot always engage in the activism that I once had more time for (in my 'youth'), I am dedicated to encouraging and supporting all of my students who are aspiring writers and activists....I also do as much 'online' and letter writing activism as I am able to, especially during the summer, when I am not correcting papers!"
Peg Johnston
"The abortion experience is a highly stigmatized one, and as a result women's voices are frequently silenced. For this reason we are launching a film project of very short videos (less than one minute) on the subject. Contact me for complete details at info@abortionconversation.com."
Nikki Craft
Recently Nikki Craft discovered 300 audio tapes spanning the last 30 years, including Andrea Dworkin?s speeches and her own conversations. Over the next few months she will post these tapes on her website No Status Quo (www.nostatusquo.com). Currently online is a song that she wrote and recorded in 1975 about Inez Garcia and Joan Little, who killed the men that raped them. For more information on Nikki Craft, visit www.nikkicraft.com.
Greetings, WIFP, June 2006
In late 2002, I moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada, and that is the new main HQ of WINGS. WINGS started in 1986, and it's still a joy to work with women's voices and creations. Contributing producers now communicate with each other via listserve, and most submit their audio via ftp uploads. New producers and editors are welcomed.
In 2004, Kim Vaz, chair of the University of South Florida Women's Studies Department, offered to post WINGS on their website (to find that page through www.wings.org , click on archives). You can listen using Windows Media Player. But please continue to ask your local community stations to carry this show -- the sound is much better over the air, and more people can hear. Programs are distributed to stations via ftp or CD, or via satellite in Australia and the US.
Since 2003, I've been Vice President for North America of AMARC (Association Mondiale des Radiodiffuseurs Communautaires -- the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters). I urge community radio women to attend the next conference in November 2006, in Amman, Jordan. This meeting will help the recently emerging community broadcasting sector in the middle east, including women's programs. See www.amarc.org to find out more.
In November 2005, the International Association of Women in Radio and TV elected me President. Women who have a profession in broadcasting or related media may apply to join through www.iawrt.org . We also give awards. IAWRT's next conference will be 2007, likely in Kenya. Mal Johnson is organizing an IAWRT event for New York in early September; email her or me if you'd like to come.
In June 2006, I'm proud to say, I received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Campus and Community Radio Association of Canada (NCRA). They are a fabulous group. www.ncra.ca
Finally please check out my new blog: http://feministbook.blogspot.com/ --it's a personal way of honouring things I read. If you like it, please put a link on your web page -- that will help it "place" in google searches.
Best wishes to all the associates in our feminist media endeavours. This is really important -- let's do more things together in the years to come.
Frieda Werden, producer
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service
Box 95090, Kingsgate
Vancouver BC V5T 4T8, Canada
(604)876-6994 www.wings.org frieda.werden@gmail.com
Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan also has another novel: The Burning Time, published in 2006.
Based on the true story of one woman’s remarkable fight against the Inquisition, this compellingly written saga is set against the vivid tapestry of the 14th century and drawn from court records of the first witchcraft trial in Ireland: the tale of an extraordinary noblewoman, Lady Alyce Kyteler of Kilkenny.
When the Church imports its Inquisition—known as “The Burning Time” to followers of the Old Religion, or the Craft of Wicce—to Ireland, it does so via an ambitious, sophisticated bishop acting as Papal Emissary. But Alyce Kyteler--educated, wealthy, and a Craft Priestess--refuses to cede power to the Church over herself, her lands, her people, or their ancient faith. She and the bishop engage in a personal battle of wits, and when she outmaneuvers him it provokes his obsessive enmity. He pronounces her followers heretics and gambles his Church career on breaking her.
But Kyteler has power, connections, courage, and the loyalty of her people--especially her shy, strange maidservant, Petronilla de Meath. So Lady Alyce persists in defying the Church’s imposition of religion, papal law, and blatant land seizures. Battle plans are laid. Finally, risking death by burning at the stake, Kyteler invokes a mysterious, possibly otherworldly ally in a shocking, dramatic climax. This lush, enthralling story of memorable characters based on actual historical figures is an unforgettable tale of power, guile, bravery--and passions both earthly and spiritual.
---
An award-winning writer, political analyst, journalist, and editor, Robin Morgan has published 20 books, including six of poetry, three of fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever. Her latest books include A Hot January: Poems, the acclaimed Saturday’s Child: A Memoir, and the best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism. Her work is translated into 13 languages. A founder and leader of contemporary US and global feminism, she lives in New York City. [For press and appearance info, write Carol Newton: CarolNewton@RobinMorgan.US ]
Andrea Dworkin
Anniversary: Remembering Andrea Dworkin
On April 7, 2006, at Oxford University in England, there will be a conference on the legacy of Andrea's work. Catharine MacKinnon will keynote it and John Stoltenberg, Andreas partner in life, will speak on a panel. Simultaneously Andrea's last completed book, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, will be published for the first time in the United Kingdom.
In accordance with her wishes, Andrea's ashes will be scattered in Heraklion, Crete. Friends, including Catharine MacKinnon and John Stoltenberg will do that Sunday, April 9, 2006.
Andrea was 19 in 1966 when she lived on Crete. She writes about that time in "First Love," a chapter from an unfinished novel:
"Living on Crete brought me to a new sensitivity, acute and intolerable. I felt the resonances of those dead, all of them, and the lives of those living, all of them, in my own body, and I came to know who I was--that self tied to the past which was ever present in a way that was not melancholy or romantic. In Amerika, each person is new, like hemp before the rope is made. On Crete the rope was used, bloodstained, it smelled of everything that had ever touched it."
The link to "First Love":
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/FirstLoveI.html
The link to the April 7 conference:
http://social-justice.politics.ox.ac.uk/events.asp?action=show&event=22
Jo Campbell
Jo Campbell, retired journalist who edited and published the online Ecotopics International News Service, died March 1. We will miss her and her important work. For more information, please see: http://www.ecotopics.com/index.htm
Mary Gehman
I'd like to share the interesting news from Mary Gehman:
As a survivor of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, I wanted to let you know I'm still in New Orleans and still selling my book Women and New Orleans plus subsequent titles. The account of my ordeal during and immediately after Katrina (having stayed on through the storm) with photos and a six-month update are all available on the website of my publishing co. www.margaretmedia.com. It's a slightly diferent perspective than a lot of people have gotten, so you might want to check it out and mention it to friends and associates.
I'm always happy to see WIFP continuing its good work. Anne Braden's voice is stilled but her spirit lives on in all of us she inspired.
Anne Braden
Passing of a Southern Civil Rights Pioneer-- Anne Braden
(March 6, 2006, Louisville, KY) -- Revered white anti-racist southern activist Anne Braden died at the age of 81 on Monday morning, March 6, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, ending nearly 60 years of unyielding action against segregation, racism, and white supremacy. Braden was hospitalized on Saturday, March 4, and had been treated for pneumonia and dehydration.
Braden catapulted into national headlines in mid-1954 when she and her husband Carl Braden were indicted for sedition for their leadership in desegregating a Louisville, Kentucky, suburb. Their purchase of a house in an all-white neighborhood on behalf of African Americans Andrew and Charlotte Wade violated Louisville’s color line and provoked violence against both families, culminating with the dynamiting of the house in June of 1954. A subsequent grand jury investigation concentrated not on the neighborhood’s harassment of the Wades, but looked to the Bradens’ supposedly communistic intentions in backing the purchase, and they were indicted for sedition that fall. The couple’s sedition case made national news and earned them the ire of segregationists across the South, which was reeling from the U.S. Supreme Court’s condemnation of school segregation in its Brown ruling earlier that spring. Only Carl was convicted, and that conviction was later overturned. The sedition charges left the Bradens pariahs, branded as radicals and “reds” in the Cold-War South, and they became fierce civil libertarians who openly espoused left-wing social critiques but would never either embrace nor disavow the Communist Party publicly because they felt that to do so accepted the terms of the 1950s anticommunist “witch hunts.”
Anne interviewing Rosa Parks in 1960.
Anne Braden’s memoir of the case, The Wall Between, was published in 1958, becoming one of the few accounts of its era to probe the psychology of white southern racism from within. Their case also introduced the Bradens to the civil rights movement blossoming farther south, in which white allies were few and far between. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., meeting Anne Braden in 1957, pronounced her “the most amazing white woman” in her unswerving dedication to civil rights. The Bradens soon joined the staff of a regional civil rights organization, the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), and began traveling the region to solicit greater white support for the movement. As the 1960s dawned, Anne Braden became a mentor and role model to younger southern students who joined the movement—a role she maintained for the rest of her life. Although she was suspect in some circles, Braden publicized and supported the student sit-ins in the pages of SCEF’s Southern Patriot newspaper, which she edited, and she encouraged a broader vision of social change that would include peace and economic justice. She was also instrumental in Louisville’s Open Housing movement in the later sixties, and among the leading white voices who helped to bring peace to the turbulent second generation of school desegregation, in which busing brought open violence to Louisville and other cities in the mid-1970s.
After Carl Braden’s untimely death in 1975, Anne Braden remained a central proponent of racial justice in Louisville and across the South, eventually evolving from pariah to heroine. Braden’s primary message was the centrality of racism in the U.S. social fabric, but she constantly stressed that civil rights activism was as much whites’ responsibility as it was that of people of color. “Hers has been among the most forceful and persistent of white voices for racial equality in modern U.S. history,” according to her biographer, Catherine Fosl, author of Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South (2002).
In speeches delivered in the nearly six decades of her activism, Braden would frequently reflect on her odyssey from segregationist youth to anti-racist advocate: a process she called “turning myself inside out.” Reared in a middle-class, pro-segregation family, Braden changed as a young reporter covering the emerging civil rights movement in 1947 Alabama, where she had observed two separate and unequal systems of justice meted out in the Birmingham courthouse. She subsequently left the supposed neutrality of mainstream journalism to apply her considerable journalistic talents to the aid of African Americans in their quest to end segregation. Her efforts against southern racism, her friend and fellow activist Angela Davis reflected, “enabled vast and often spectacular social changes. . . that most of her contemporaries during the 1950s would never have been able to imagine.”
Decades later, Braden was still working against racism and for justice and peace. In the fall of 2005, she joined other Louisville activists on buses bound for the anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C. even though she went in a wheelchair. She was a frequent voice in the Rainbow Coalition nationally and a co-founder of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, as well as being active in local issues including police brutality, housing-not-bombs, environmental racism, civil liberties, and lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender and other human rights. In the 1990s she became the recipient of many awards, including the first ever Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty, bestowed on her by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1991. She also became a teacher, offering social justice history courses at the University of Louisville and Northern Kentucky University. Braden was still teaching at the time of her death and was still fired by the passion for justice that had guided her adult life. She had completed a proposal for a local activist summer camp only the day before her hospitalization.
Braden was born Anne Gambrell McCarty on July 28, 1924 in Louisville, Kentucky, to Gambrell and Anita McCarty. Most of her childhood was spent in Anniston, Alabama, where she lived through her high school graduation. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1945, and held news reporting jobs at the Anniston Star, the Birmingham News, and the Louisville Times in the late 1940s. After Anne’s marriage to Carl Braden in 1948, the couple had three children: James, Anita, and Elizabeth. James and Elizabeth Braden survive their mother, along with two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Braden’s church was St. George’s Episcopal in Louisville.
A community memorial service celebrated the life and work of Anne Braden on April 23rd, 2006, 2:00 – 5:00 pm, at the Memorial Auditorium in downtown Louisville. In lieu of flowers, donations will be received to support the continuation of her work for justice, payable to the Carl Braden Memorial Center, Inc., and sent to P.O. Box 1543, Louisville, KY 40201.
Angela Davis and Anne Braden in Louisville, KY, in the 1990s.
Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Carl Braden Memorial Center
3208 W. Broadway
Louisville, KY 40211 Contacts: Alice Wade (502) 778-8130; Cate Fosl (502) 291-3824; Carla Wallace (502) 558-7566
http://www.subversivesoutherner.com/
Sarah Misailidis
Sarah Emebet Misailidis works for Congressman Albert Wynn of the 4th District of Maryland. She will still be on Capitol Hill, but on the House of Representatives side as opposed to the Senate side.
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
1940 Calvert Street, NW
Washinton, DC 20009-1502
phone: 202-265-6707
www.wifp.org