After the departures of Jill Abramson from the New York Times and Natalie Nougayrède from Le Monde, Amanda Wilson – the only woman to lead the Sydney Morning Herald in its 180-year history – outlines the perils of editing while female.
By Amanda Wilson
theguardian.com, Sunday 18 May 2014
Media is a tough world. It’s tough on executives who work in it and
manage the 24/7 demands of news. It is especially tough on women who
want to work their way up the greasy pole of management.
Getting
to the top, becoming the first female leader of a venerable news media
institution, does not come with any soft landings. You have to be game
to take it on, for all the personal flak that will come your way. And no
one ever has to tell you to lean in, because there’s no other way to do
it.
Women vacate the editor’s chair as unceremoniously as men.
Two years ago at Fairfax I walked away from my job as editor of the
Sydney Morning Herald – the first (and only) woman to have held the job
in the paper's 180 years of continuous publication – at the same time
the Herald’s publisher, Peter Fray, and the Age’s editor-in-chief, Paul
Ramadge, departed. I had been editor for 18 months.
Sylvie
Kauffmann, who was appointed editor-in-chief of Le Monde in 2011, a few
days after I achieved my career milestone at the Herald, lasted just a
year at the helm before stepping down. Last week Le Monde’s Natalie Nougayrède resigned after a power struggle with management just a year after the staff ballot that put her in the job.
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