December 02, 2005

You are so right when you say the moon is made of green cheese

Oh man. Oh man oh man.

Exactly.

Please do yourselves a service today and read Susan Mernit's post about the lengthy, investigative Craig's List article from the SF Weekly. While Susan praises the article for its look at the life of master Craig, she also points out at the end of her post the suspicious absence of women as sources--and folks there are a lot of sources in the article.
Yep, one interesting side note here, not the focus of this terrific story--is that every single person mentioned or quoted in it--except for Craig's unnamed girlfriend--is male.

It's clear that the article's author left entire layers of the citizen journalism perspective out of the article. What wasn't clear when I initially heard about it is why. Was the writer being 'unthinking'? Was it easier and quicker to find the men to interview? Was there some bias or hidden agenda? Were all the women having PMS that day?

I'm glad I waited to post because the writer answers some of these questions in comments here. And the answers were worse than I thought:
Sadly, you are right. Few media critics and leaders of the citizen journalism movement are women.

Sphincter says what? Oh tell me this is flame bait and not the view point of a ''''''legit'''''' journalist. Rather than naming the hapless reporter, I will name the women who commented on the article with some sound advice: Elisa Camahort, Liza Sabater, Nancy White, Sylvia Paull, and Halley Suitt.