At journalism school, a Serbian colleague was advised to spend time in the kafana (a traditional local cavern) to source the best news stories. At the newspaper she later worked for, editors would start the day with coffee and a shot of raki. Eventually, she left after she hadn’t been paid for three or four months. Her experience maybe bubbles down to societal and cultural details; suffice it to say, she’s no longer in journalism.
In the European Union – which comprises 28 countries on the continent, not including Norway, Switzerland and most of the former Yugoslav nations, like Serbia – more women than men go to journalism school. A 2013 report from the European Institute of Gender Equality (EIGE), which has done the most comparative data fieldwork in this field, emphasized that for at least two decades, women outnumbered men at university level and in practice-based journalism programs.
Yet in most European countries, journalism is still a man’s world. So what are some of the secrets?
Don’t be afraid to speak out
In 2010, 68% of women graduated from journalism schools in the EU, a trend which is reflected in Germany, where Julia Korbik is from. She studied a journalism master’s in France, which she says was only a strange experience for her in the sense of French journalism being perhaps more rigid than German journalism in terms of form and mixing opinion and news.
As a columnist at The European, she is the only woman working alongside six male editors, which includes the editor-in-chief. The online magazine is a small operation based in Berlin, specialized in opinions and debates. “It seems to be a field a lot of women find difficult,” said Korbik, 27. “I have the impression that women hesitate to speak their minds, or that they really want to be properly prepared before speaking up. Men just speak up, even if their ideas are not that thought out. I struggled with that in the beginning. I had to learn to speak up no matter what, and sometimes against the other editors.”
As Lena Dunham, Caitlin Moran and Amy Poehler were releasing their books in 2014, Korbik led the way in Germany as the author of a beginner’s guide to feminism. She acknowledges being the only female journalist at her magazine can be an issue.
“I’m always representing ‘the women’ in the eyes of the others. Of course, I cover gender issues, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in other things. So it’s sometimes a battle for me to get other assignments. Nonetheless, I like working with my colleagues and the majority of them acknowledge my work and are interested in what I have to say.”
Julia Korbik, submitted photo.
2. Innovate and disrupt when the traditional media model fails you
From Barcelona to Sofia, for every dozen women I know who dropped out of journalism because of a lack of mentors or mindset, or indeed a functioning infrastructure, there is a handful that stand out for making the industry work for them.
The solution to the struggle: you have to set a trail blazing in your local culture.
From her journalism school in Turin, Alessia Cerantola remembers one comment from a tutor; “Newsrooms are places for men; it’s just an excuse for them to stay away from their wives.”
In 2011, the 34-year-old co-founded the first ever investigative journalism centre in Italy, IRPI. It is a partner of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of 107 NGOs in 50 countries. Their last piece, exposing a serial rapist who used “couchsurfing” to secure his victims, was a year-long, nine-country project. It was published in The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald amongst others.
Yet it is fascinating to think that Italy did not even have an investigative journalism center until someone of my generation founded one. Despite Cerantola’s success with IRPI, which focuses on cross-border teams of reporters, she still has many other part-time jobs. She volunteers at a daily women’s radio bulletin in the morning and earns her income as a web editor at a university in Rome, as well as freelancing about Japan.
“One of IRPI’s goals is to overcome these problems and barriers,” she said. “It’s very hard for us to sell stories. And be paid!”
Cerantola tried all the traditional paths to get into journalism in Italy to no avail.
“I passed the exam to attend a school for 20 students on my course – there are about 10 schools recognizing journalists nation-wide. The other option is to train for two years in a newsroom which is basically a non-opportunity – no-one has the money to pay you, so the pressure is increasingly about getting into and passing the main schools.”
During her finals at journalism school, Cerantola was advised not to focus too much on Japan as a niche; she had previously paid for her own internship at a national news agency in Tokyo. Just over a week later, the Fukishima disaster struck. With only two Italian correspondents in Japan, Cerantola found a way into freelance journalism, helping report via Skype and her Japanese language skills.
“Have courage and don’t focus on traditional journalism,” Cerantola said. “Be innovative, disrupt.”
Alessia Cerantola, submitted photo.
3. Do your homework
Elina Makri, 33, also founded an investigative journalism initiative in the form of an award in Greece in 2014. The aim was to provide something different, for young people, away from the pre-existing one that has “been won by everyone.”
She objected when I suggested that a good tip from her experience as a leader in the media might be that she made her own rules.
“No, that’s too authoritarian,” she said. “It’s important to do your own projects.” She has won a prestigious European award, the Charlemagne youth prize, for her work with Greek on the European media scene – ironically, it’s a media NGO she now has to close down since she has to pay so much tax on it. “Half of my income goes to the state,” she said.
When the Greek and German media first had confrontations during the economic crisis about how Greece should manage its debt, Makri promoted friendship and reconciliation between both countries, networking, traveling and setting up a Greek-German collaboration with a German foundation.
Makri’s day job is not in the media; she studied law and international relations in Belgium and the Netherlands. For the last six months she has been working in communications at a foundation focused on technology and democracy. With the investigative journalism prize, she is also setting up the country’s first hackathon. Tech, she says, speaks the same language right now as media ideologically should in Greece.
“I did try to be a traditional journalist in Greece, but I was very unhappy in the newsroom,” she said. “I felt like I was working for political shops which were not digital savvy. They couldn’t understand public engagement; newspapers in Greece just want to influence the political game. They didn’t need journalists, they just wanted to rewrite text. I didn’t learn anything. I created my own prize, I found funding. I am currently promoting data journalism in Greece, which is something you’d think already existed, and that’s only thanks to the support of a tech company and the biggest research centre here. I wasn’t having fun, and so here I am.”
Elina Makri, submitted photo.
Who’s helping women in Europe?
Makri couldn’t think of any Greek union which could support the nation’s women in journalism, though Hellenic and European forums do exist. Italian unions like FNSI and ODG, said Cerantola, are usually helpful for staff writers or journalists with regulars contracts.
“They are much weaker and unable to protect freelancers,” she said. “So, especially as a woman, you may be exposed to the injustices of a sexist job or if you fell pregnant and needed leave and the guarantee of coming back to a job, without any or some of the protection that a union and the order can provide.”
There are leagues for women journalists and broadcasters in Germany, and national unions like IG-Meridien which support a quota for women in journalism. A 2012 campaign to introduce a 30% quota for leadership positions for women was signed by over 350 professionals.
“Diversity in media is so important,” said Korbik. “You have to point out problems and try to solve them, even if quotas might not be the way. The sad thing is, when you look at the media in Germany, very few national editor-in-chiefs are female, and the huge majority of front page byline are by men.”
Three other women to watch out for in Greece, Germany and Italy:
Ines Pohl, editor-in-chief of national left-leaning daily die tageszeitung since 2009, Germany, said it took a strike by female employees to get gender equality on the agenda at her newspaper, which was born out of the ‘68 revolutions.
Arianna Ciccone is the co-founder of the international journalism festival in Perugia, Italy, which started in 2006.
And finally, Arianna Huffington. Yes, we know she left Greece when she was young, but she basically owns the idea of the first online opinion media, which the Guardian’s Comment is Free section, first mooted by Emily Bell (director of Tow Centre of Journalism), saw as an inspiration, and of course, eventual competition.
From the U.K.
I have spent the last year working as a digital journalist trainee at the Guardian, an inaugural program where 10 of us were selected from over 900 applications. Nine out of 10 of us were female, one of us transgender. In the first round of interviews, I had interviewed in a room which was mainly full of young male candidates, and so looking at the final employees that the Guardian picked, it shouldn’t have, but did, come as a pleasant surprise.
Only a couple of staff members ever commented on this off-the-record in the newsroom. That’s probably because 46% of employees at the Guardian are female, with an increase in new female hires. Just over 50% are in management positions (a slight increase), and 42% are in senior management positions (a slight decrease). According to Yasir Mirza, diversity officer at The Guardian, the “gender breakdown of all employees within GNM has seen a positive shift between 2011 and 2014, with the level of females entering the organization increasing from 42.5% in 2011–12 to 45.2% in 2014.”
And now, excitingly, The Guardian hired its first ever woman as editor-in-chief since it was founded in 1821 — Katharine Viner.
Nabeelah Shabbir is a journalist with The Guardian. You can follow her on Twitter at @lahnabee.
Editor’s note: This essay is the third in a series on women in leadership in journalism. Nabeelah Shabbir and the other essayists were chosen based on their proposals. Each woman will receive $200 for their essay. You can read our past articles on women in leadership here.
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