Two veteran journalists challenged more than 100 audience members in the McCormick Tribune Center Forum on Monday to “stand outside the safety zone” while reporting.
“In journalism, the public is represented by the daring and the dutiful,” said Betsy Wade, a former reporter and columnist for The New York Times, mimicking the opening to the television series “Law & Order.”
Kay Mills, a former editorial writer and assistant opinion editor for the Los Angeles Times, spoke along with Wade, who was one of seven women that filed a 1974 lawsuit against The New York Times for gender discrimination. The two focused on the struggles of women journalists throughout the 20th century. The lecture was a part of the Medill School of Journalism’s Crain lecture series.
Wade and Mills often are viewed as pioneers for women in journalism, but they told the audience that women have played a vital role at newspapers since Nellie Bly exposed the conditions of impoverished people in the early 1900s. Chronicling female journalists from Ida Tarbell to Barbara Walters, Wade and Mills detailed the influence of those who paved the way for future journalists.
“The women in journalism today stand on the shoulders of women journalists of the past,” Mills said.
One of the strengths of having women in the newsroom, said Mills, is their ability to introduce unexposed issues into the medium. In this tradition, all journalists should try to bring subjects that are taboo or underrepresented to the newsroom, she added.
Only when journalists are daring can they draw attention to issues such as molestation in the Roman Catholic Church, the Enron scandal and Watergate, Wade said.
“Comfort the afflicted or afflict the comfortable,” she said. “If you come to the end of your experience without that nervousness, you haven’t stood outside the safety zone.”
Mills stressed how women are not always welcome to take risks. She recalled her experiences dealing with the editorial staff of the Los Angeles Times, which in the 1970s were hesitant to print stories about women’s issues.
“There are times I wanted to stomp out of the editorial meetings,” Mills said. “But I knew if I stomped out, these issues wouldn’t be (in the paper), so I stayed.”
Wade and Mill’s mix of video clips of former female journalists, interspersed with their own stories, generated audience laughter throughout the presentation. One anecdote highlighted Eleanor Roosevelt’s decision to only accept interviews only from women.
Medill freshman Malika Bilal said the lecture was both empowering and entertaining.
“It was an excellent way for young woman to learn about the business,” she said. “We really got to pick their brains — it was invaluable.”
Manuel Domergue, a student visiting Medill from France, said the duo offered a historical view of discrimination in American journalism.
“I didn’t know about the feminist fights in journalism here,” Domergue said. “I try to defend everything about journalism, but it’s important to see how there are gender and race conflicts here.”
