Why Not Her?
I'm tired of asking the wrong questions.
Journalism is an industry of questions. Reporters have to verify what we hear and that process usually starts with what we ask. A super important one is “Why?”
Why should I cover this story? Why now?
Over more than a decade as a journalist I’ve come up against certain questions both about myself and the women I write about. Sometimes the Whys are spoken and sometimes they’re not. But they’re always there. It left me wondering why these Whys are so important.
Why care about her?
Why listen to her?
Why hire her?
Why believe her?
I’m not saying these questions are defunct. But there’s a hidden one within them that I believe tells us way more: Why not?
Why not care about her?
Why not listen to her?
Why not hire her?
Why not believe her?
Our industry is shrinking and I felt the impact of that way before I was laid off from a job I’d had for nine years last summer. One effect was how much harder it became to tell the stories I cared about.
Stories, often, relating to women.
I’ve pitched time and time again stories of women being harassed on the internet, or being the ones most affected by return to office mandates, or being instrumental in industries considered male-centric.
I truly believe media companies are patriarchal to the core, regardless of how many women are currently in leadership positions. This trickles down, and if you don’t have an editor who pushes back, women’s stories are destined to die.
Months of my time have been dedicated to exposing sexual predators only to be told at the last minute it’s not worth the risk. My features were pulled, determined “not interesting enough” to the male minded decision makers.
I became pretty tired of it.
I’ve thought about setting up my own place to tell some of these stories for a long time. So here it is: Why Not Her?
Here I want to interview awesome women about what they’re doing, noticing, loving, hating, and achieving. I want to revive the stories where I listened and believed. I want to prove we are interesting, bold, and newsworthy enough.
I hope you subscribe and come along for the ride!