The journalism industry is severely lacking in leadership by women and racial minorities, according to the Nieman Reports story published Wednesday.
This year’s census by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), which looked at diversity at print newspapers, shows women accounting for 35.4 percent of supervisors. This barely marks an increase from 1999, when women made up 33.8 percent of supervisors. Women run three out of the 25 biggest U.S. titles and one of the top 25 international titles. They make up 37.2 percent of overall newspaper employees, a whole three-tenths of a percent increase from 1999. Racial minorities fare even worse, comprising 13 percent of overall employees.
In broadcast newsrooms, women make up 31 percent of news directors and 20 percent of general managers, according to a 2014 survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association. The fewest female leaders appear in radio, where they account for 23 percent of news directors and 18 percent of general managers.
The trend is not limited to the U.S., or even to media. A survey of 500 media companies in nearly 60 countries discovered that men hold 73 percent of management positions. And among Fortune 500 CEOs, women account for 4.8 percent.
There are, of course, high-profile exceptions; Arianna Huffington and Marissa Meyer among them. The ASNE survey shows women among the top three leaders at 63 percent of print organizations. But according to the numbers, these instances do little to mitigate a larger trend.
Many say the imbalance is no accident, and instead the result of professional and social factors that inherently tip the scales for men.
Women enter communications schools and the journalism industry at roughly the same numbers as men, according to the Nieman report. From there, the number drops off — only one-third of people with 20 or more years of journalism experience are women.
One factor in this disparity is the fact that more men than women hold “hard” news beats such as politics and world news, where organizations often turn to hire management. An analysis of thousands of New York Times articles this year showed that men wrote most of the articles in the seven largest sections. And for women serving as primary child caretakers — the case in the majority of American families — irregular hours and travel make it difficult to commit to these beats, the Nieman report said.
Women that make it through the pipeline in many industries face cultural attitudes that favor leadership by men. A Fortune study on performance reviews in the tech industry found that words like “bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive” appear in reviews of female leaders more frequently than men. Jill Abramson, who was fired from her position as editor of the New York Times this year, was frequently described as such. A Google search of “Jill Abramson abrasive” yields over 110,000 results.
Some have voiced hopes that the emergence of digital media would upend hiring structures that are frequently skewed toward men. As news consumption goes digital, women are leading the way as consumers. Thirty percent of American adults use Facebook for news, and women make up 58 percent of those news consumers, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center report.
But men are still leading as the creators in at least several high-profile instances. Vox and First Look Media were founded this year by men, and FiveThirtyEight was founded by two men and one woman. A Vanity Fair list of media disruptors, released on Wednesday, is comprised almost entirely of white men.
Why is this important? The report cited several studies showing that diverse newsrooms do a better job at news coverage, and their policies favoring work-life balance are not as prohibitive for working parents of any gender.
The issue of newsroom diversity is not limited to gender — it is also important to promote people of diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, the report said. It cited McClatchy, where women serve as 13 out of 29 executive editors, as a company that has done this effectively.
A more diverse newsroom can yield a wider range of possibilities for coverage, Keith Woods, vice president for diversity in news and operations at NPR, said in a report by The Atlantic.
“When you fail to pursue the most diverse news staff, you fail to open up the possibilities created when you bring a broader range of life experience,” he said.
Use the article to answer the question.
Why does the author include a question at the beginning of the 12th paragraph?
(1 point)
Responses
The author is asking readers to respond by sharing an opinion.
The author is asking readers to respond by sharing an opinion.
The author believes it is important that white men continue to lead high-profile media distributors.
The author believes it is important that white men continue to lead high-profile media distributors.
The question supports the idea that more diversity is needed in newsrooms.
The question supports the idea that more diversity is needed in newsrooms.
The question engages readers and tells them that there will be a shift in focus.
The question supports the idea that more diversity is needed in newsrooms.
The average person uses a typical plastic bag for as short a time as 12 minutes before throwing it away, never thinking of where it may end up.
Yet once consigned to a landfill, that standard grocery store tote takes hundreds or thousands of years to break down — much more than a human lifetime. Bags make up an alarming amount of the plastic found in whale stomachs or bird nests, and it’s no wonder — globally, we use between 1 and 5 trillion plastic bags each year.
Biodegradable plastic bags are marketed as more eco-friendly solutions, able to break down into harmless material more quickly than traditional plastics. One company claims their shopping bag “will degrade and biodegrade in a continuous, irreversible and unstoppable process” if it ends up as litter in the environment.
In a study published this week in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers put supposedly eco-friendly bags made from various organic and plastic materials and sourced from U.K. stores to the test. After three years buried in garden soil, submerged in ocean water, exposed to open light and air or stashed in a laboratory, none of the bags broke down completely in all the environments.
In fact, the biodegradable bags that had been left underwater in a marina could still hold a full load of groceries.
“What is the role of some of these really innovative and novel polymers?” asked Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from the University of Plymouth and the study’s senior author. A polymer is a repeating chain of chemicals that makes up a plastic’s structure, whether biodegradable or synthetic.
“They’re challenging to recycle and are very slow to degrade if they become litter in the environment,” Thompson said, suggesting these biodegradable plastics may be causing more problems than they solve.
What the scientists found
Even in a tough marine environment, where algae and animals quickly covered the plastic, three years wasn’t long enough to break down any of the plastics except for the plant-based compostable option, which did disappear underwater within three months. The plant-derived bags, however, remained intact but weakened when buried under garden soil for 27 months.
The only treatment that consistently broke down all of the bags was exposure to open air for more than nine months, and in that case even the standard, traditional polyethylene bag disintegrated into pieces before 18 months had passed.
“I would take that timescale to be too long for these products to be regarded as providing an environmental advantage,” Thompson said.
Even if these bags take less time to break down than traditional plastic bags, as litter they would still have enough time to become potentially deadly food for ocean animals like seabirds, whales, turtles or fish. Moreover, they would still be an eyesore and take up space at waste facilities for months or years.
And when some of the plastic bags did seem to break down, such as the bags left to the open air, it was unclear if the disintegration was complete.
“Did the plastic that was lost just become smaller pieces of plastic?” Kalow asked, “Or did it become molecules that could dissolve in water and be consumed?”
Future studies, she said, should dig into the fate of those disintegrated plastic particles, to ascertain whether they truly break down and disappear — or become microplastics and harmful chemicals.
Why it matters
Even standard plastic bags can’t be recycled from your home recycling bin, so most end up in landfill or are swept away by water or wind, becoming litter.
Biodegradable and compostable bags are meant to solve these problems, but the study indicates that’s not the case so far.
These alternative bags aren’t meant to end up as litter in the street or in the natural environment — ideally, they’d all be treated just as manufacturers expect. Biodegradable bags would be landfilled or, in some cases, recycled into new plastics — at least in theory.
But “even if we can make something that’s recyclable, that doesn’t mean any commercial recycling plant would be interested in dealing with it,” Kalow said. Biodegradable plastics can’t generally be recycled with other plastics — in fact, they can ruin other batches of recyclable plastic, degrading the product until it becomes unusable.
Meanwhile, the eco-conscious should hope their compostable bags end up in industrial composting facilities where high temperatures and favorable conditions for bacteria and other living things would break them down. (Compostable bags in chilly, oxygen-starved landfills can actually be preserved rather than destroyed.
These are the real problems, Thompson said. Labels like “biodegradable,” “compostable” or even “recyclable” are theoretical — they don’t reflect the reality of what happens to the materials we throw away or litter into the oceans, and they don’t help people accurately understand how to get rid of them.
Three years after the researchers’ plastic bags were buried or submerged, they were nearly as useful — and as harmful — as the day they were made.
Some simple solutions might help. Thompson suggested that standardized products, made of the same sets of materials, could streamline our waste management systems and allow much more of our waste to be profitably recycled. Kalow, the polymer chemist, said there may yet be hope for new, improved biodegradable plastics if only we could discover that technology.
In the meantime, it doesn’t hurt to remember your reusable bag on your way to the store.
use the article to answer the question.
Which section provides the most evidence supporting the need for new, improved biodegradable plastics?
(1 point)
Responses
“How biodegradable plastic bags don’t live up to their name”
“How biodegradable plastic bags don’t live up to their name”
“What the researchers did”
“What the researchers did”
“What the scientists found”
“What the scientists found”
“Why it matters”
"What the scientists found"
The journalism industry is severely lacking in leadership by women and racial minorities, according to the Nieman Reports story published Wednesday.
This year’s census by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), which looked at diversity at print newspapers, shows women accounting for 35.4 percent of supervisors. This barely marks an increase from 1999, when women made up 33.8 percent of supervisors. Women run three out of the 25 biggest U.S. titles and one of the top 25 international titles. They make up 37.2 percent of overall newspaper employees, a whole three-tenths of a percent increase from 1999. Racial minorities fare even worse, comprising 13 percent of overall employees.
In broadcast newsrooms, women make up 31 percent of news directors and 20 percent of general managers, according to a 2014 survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association. The fewest female leaders appear in radio, where they account for 23 percent of news directors and 18 percent of general managers.
The trend is not limited to the U.S., or even to media. A survey of 500 media companies in nearly 60 countries discovered that men hold 73 percent of management positions. And among Fortune 500 CEOs, women account for 4.8 percent.
There are, of course, high-profile exceptions; Arianna Huffington and Marissa Meyer among them. The ASNE survey shows women among the top three leaders at 63 percent of print organizations. But according to the numbers, these instances do little to mitigate a larger trend.
Many say the imbalance is no accident, and instead the result of professional and social factors that inherently tip the scales for men.
Women enter communications schools and the journalism industry at roughly the same numbers as men, according to the Nieman report. From there, the number drops off — only one-third of people with 20 or more years of journalism experience are women.
One factor in this disparity is the fact that more men than women hold “hard” news beats such as politics and world news, where organizations often turn to hire management. An analysis of thousands of New York Times articles this year showed that men wrote most of the articles in the seven largest sections. And for women serving as primary child caretakers — the case in the majority of American families — irregular hours and travel make it difficult to commit to these beats, the Nieman report said.
Women that make it through the pipeline in many industries face cultural attitudes that favor leadership by men. A Fortune study on performance reviews in the tech industry found that words like “bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive” appear in reviews of female leaders more frequently than men. Jill Abramson, who was fired from her position as editor of the New York Times this year, was frequently described as such. A Google search of “Jill Abramson abrasive” yields over 110,000 results.
Some have voiced hopes that the emergence of digital media would upend hiring structures that are frequently skewed toward men. As news consumption goes digital, women are leading the way as consumers. Thirty percent of American adults use Facebook for news, and women make up 58 percent of those news consumers, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center report.
But men are still leading as the creators in at least several high-profile instances. Vox and First Look Media were founded this year by men, and FiveThirtyEight was founded by two men and one woman. A Vanity Fair list of media disruptors, released on Wednesday, is comprised almost entirely of white men.
Why is this important? The report cited several studies showing that diverse newsrooms do a better job at news coverage, and their policies favoring work-life balance are not as prohibitive for working parents of any gender.
The issue of newsroom diversity is not limited to gender — it is also important to promote people of diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, the report said. It cited McClatchy, where women serve as 13 out of 29 executive editors, as a company that has done this effectively.
A more diverse newsroom can yield a wider range of possibilities for coverage, Keith Woods, vice president for diversity in news and operations at NPR, said in a report by The Atlantic.
“When you fail to pursue the most diverse news staff, you fail to open up the possibilities created when you bring a broader range of life experience,” he said.
Use the article to answer the question.
What would happen if you reversed the order of paragraphs 3 and 4?
(1 point)
Responses
The importance of the problem would become clearer because the worldwide impact would be centered sooner.
The importance of the problem would become clearer because the worldwide impact would be centered sooner.
The broader implications of an idea would be discussed before the reader understands what the idea is.
The broader implications of an idea would be discussed before the reader understands what the idea is.
The focus of the article would shift from old statistics to trends in the industry.
The focus of the article would shift from old statistics to trends in the industry.
The extent of the problem would be lost on readers because they would not receive all the data.
The extent of the problem would be lost on readers because they would not receive all the data.
The extent of the problem would be lost on readers because they would not receive all the data.
Use the article to answer the question.
How do the statistics from 1999 connect to the idea that there is a gender problem in journalism today?
(1 point)
Responses
The statistics show that the problem was even greater in the past.
The statistics show that the problem was even greater in the past.
The statistics provide a counterpoint to the author’s claim by showing that the industry has been consistent.
The statistics provide a counterpoint to the author’s claim by showing that the industry has been consistent.
The statistics provide something to measure current data against to establish a pattern.
The statistics provide something to measure current data against to establish a pattern.
The statistics give background information to establish how many women and minorities actually work in the industry.
The statistics give background information to establish how many women and minorities actually work in the industry.