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The media becomes an activist for democracy
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June 6, 2018, 11:07 a.m.
Reporting & Production
LINK: www.womeninnews.org  ➚   |   Posted by: Christine Schmidt   |   June 6, 2018

The lack of women in leadership in the journalism industry is not an unfamiliar topic. But what are news organizations actually doing about it? And how can other news organizations take on the gender diversity gap, too?

The second annual Women in News summit, hosted in Portugal by WAN-IFRA this week, highlighted depressing (but motivating?) statistics on women’s presence in the media world and the steps that news organizations like Gizmodo and the BBC have been taking to improve their diversity. (WAN-IFRA’s Women in News initiative compiled a handbook on gender diversity in media with 10 case studies from Botswana to the United Kingdom.) Here are some of the main findings discussed at the summit:

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The media becomes an activist for democracy
“We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”
Embracing influencers as allies
“News organizations will increasingly rely on digital creators not just as amplifiers but as integral partners in storytelling.”
Action over analysis
“We’ve overindexed on problem articulation, to the point of problem admiring. The risk is that we are analyzing ourselves into inaction and irrelevance.”