The Grey Lady does not like women very much, if the kinds of columnists she regularly hires is any indication. Though getting rid of John Tierney's sermons about us ladies and our insignificance was a blessing, the truth is that the New York Times does not have very many female columnists at all. Maureen Dowd and Lisa Belkin come to mind.
Now Lisa Belkin's column on balancing work and family has been moved to the Business section of the paper, and some women readers don't like this at all. From an e-mail I got*:
Hi, friends, if you're like me either because you know Lisa or just love her column in the NY Times on the precarious balance between life and work that each of us is trying our best to accomplish (survive?) every week you may have been surprised last week when you couldn't find the column. It turns out that the Times has squished the careers section into the business section -- and Lisa's column along with it! Kinda rude to do to someone who has more comments and emails about her column than anyone except Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman. And then I thought again, that it's actually an affront to all working women. How much less important could we women, the majority of subscribers, be to the NY Times!! This from a paper that has just one other regular columnist who is a woman!!
So, I wanted to ask for your help in moving the Grey Lady with an email campaign? I think we should wait until this Sunday so we can say that we may have missed the column last week but felt for sure that it would pop up again this week -- but alas, the column written specifically by and for us working women has disappeared!
Send an email to Bill Keller, the managing editor of the times (bkeller@nytimes.com) starting on Sunday with the following talking points: (feel free to put it into your own words, don't want him to think that it is a canned campaign):
* Love the column and can't find it
* Feel slighted that the issue of work/life seems to have taken a back seat there
* Wonder what it would take for the Times to take women subscribers and women columnists seriously
* Why not move the column to the front of the business section or the op-ed page, on serious real estate, where it belongs?
I don't think you have to be a subscriber to find this offensive, just a woman trying to balance everything is enough!
Please pass this message onto your girlfriends who are also doing their very best to balance work and life.
Not a bad idea for something to do on a Sunday morning or afternoon.
-----
*I'm not sure if the original sender wants her name made public or not so I omitted it here.