Good Girls Making Trouble

When I was first breaking into journalism in the ‘60s, newsrooms were completely dominated by men. Women were confined to subservient roles. 

Then came my generation. As Baby Boomers, many of us were active in the antiwar and civil rights movements, and soon every other form of inequity came into focus for us -- especially misogyny and homophobia.

In the media industry, women started demanding equal opportunities.

One series that examines this is “Good Girls Revolt,” the 2016 Amazon production based on Lynn Povich’s 2013 book of the same name, thinly fictionalizing the events that led women employees to challenge the existing order at Newsweekmagazine.

And according to this version, there was at least as much “sex, drugs and rock n roll” at Newsweek as at Rolling Stone.

Early in the Amazon series and once later on, a character playing Nora Ephron makes an appearance -- she is accurately portrayed as having quit Newsweek because the magazine used her work but didn’t give her a byline, which was emblematic of how women were treated at the time.

Of course, Ephron simply went on to become a not only a successful writer, most famously at Esquire, but a screenwriter/producer responsible for films like “Sleepless in Seattle”, “Silkwood”, “When Harry Met Sally”, “Julie and Julia”, “You’ve Got Mail”, and many others.

It’s difficult to think of a journalist-screenwriter with a better resume during her lifetime; she died in 2012 at age 71.

Overall, the “Good Girls” series focuses on a group of women trying to make it at Newsweek, but the men in supporting roles represent the mixed feelings my generation of male journalists had as we saw our female colleagues battle for their rights. Our bosses were all men who expected us, not the women, to eventually take their places, but some of us sided with our female colleagues instead.

I liked the series; it brought back a lot of memories. 

And back in the real world, the battle for gender equality in journalism was hardly resolved by that one lawsuit, but today women are well represented in all kinds of journalism, although pay and power disparities persist.

(Tomato Plant Mystery Update: A second tomato plant has been stolen after nightfall. I suspect a raccoon may be the thief.)

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