Women and Journalism

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‘One of the boys’?WOMEN'S EXPERIENCES OF THE GLASS CEILING

In May 2002 discussions began to circulate publicly in the United States about who would succeed Tom Brokaw as NBC's lead television network news anchor. Since Peter Jennings at ABC and Dan Rather at CBS were both nearing retirement age, speculation immediately emerged as to their likely successors. A feature common to each of the names mentioned to succeed these three men was that they were all male. The fact that the maleness of the evening news was even publicly raised as an issue is perhaps a sign of progress, along with the question about whether men or women would notice (or complain about) the assumption that evening news anchors must be patriarchs. Although women journalists ...