She Had To: The 19th CEO, Co-Founder On Creating News Site With Gender Lens
Emily Ramshaw, CEO and co-founder of The 19th, offers news through a gender lens in a new nonprofit.
She got the idea for her latest ambitious journalism venture four years ago while on maternity leave for her first child.
As more non-profit journalism sites were launching in the media landscape, Emily Ramshaw says she thought, “Why is there not one for women, politics and policy?”
“As more non-profit #journalism sites were launching in the media landscape, @eramshaw thought, “Why is there not one for women, politics and policy?””
A journalist with 18 years experience, including six years at the Dallas Morning News and 10 years at Texas Tribune, most recently as editor-in-chief, Ramshaw says she started thinking then about launching a sustainable non-profit journalism site.
Read more in Take The Lead on 50 Women Can Change The World in Journalism
The result is The 19th Project launched now online and with a full staff in July. Ramshaw is co-founder and CEO, defining the effort as aiming “to capture this ongoing American story,” the “unfinished business” of women “underrepresented in politics and policy journalism and in newsroom leadership.”
Now working on building up a staff with mostly women of color, Ramshaw says it is important because who is in the newsroom “influences what stories are told, how the news is covered and whose voices are elevated.”
“@eramshaw says who is in the newsroom “influences what stories are told, how the news is covered and whose voices are elevated.” #diversitymatters”
The 19th Project, named after the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote, launches in its centennial with this mission: “Our goal is to empower women — particularly those historically underserved by American media — with the information, community and resources they need to be equal participants in our society.”
Admitting “I did not have much energy with an infant,” Ramshaw says, and because it was such an obviously great idea, “I assumed someone else would do it.”
Read more in Take The Lead on the gender gap in journalism
What it was, is a nonprofit journalism organization that would produce “journalism that reimagines politics and policy coverage through a gender lens.”
“@19thnews produces “#journalism that reimagines politics and policy coverage through a gender lens.” #womeninmedia”
It was at a time when nonprofit journalism organizations were sprouting around the country and getting funding. According to Texas Monthly, “One study by Bill Birnbauer, author of The Rise of Nonprofit Investigative Journalism in the United States, found that the 20 largest nonprofit news organizations received $423.1 million in donations between 2009 and 2015.”
Ramshaw says her participation a year ago at a Knight Foundation conference on local news accelerators convinced her.
“I got up in the middle of the night and said, ‘I have to do this,’” says Ramshaw.
According to Neiman Lab, Ramshaw and an initial team of five “is starting out with “nearly $5 million” in funding. That includes $1 million each from Kathryn Murdoch and the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ Reproductive Health and Women’s Rights Collaborative; $500,000 from Craig Newmark Philanthropies; and other substantial amounts from the Ford Foundation, Emerson Collective, Knight Foundation, Abigail Disney, Arnold Ventures, the Packard Foundation, and more.”
The 19th staff for now includes Amanda Zamora, co-founder and publisher; Andrea Valdez, editor-in-chief; Errin Haines, editor-at-large; and Johanna Derlega, chief revenue officer. The staff will expand over the next five months.
Read more in Take The Lead on 50 Women Can Change The World in Journalism
The lack of equity for women in newsrooms, newsroom leadership and journalism entrepreneurship has been an issue for decades.
According to Poynter,“Each year, women comprise more than two-thirds of graduates with degrees in journalism or mass communications, and yet the media industry is just one-third women, a number that only decreases for women of color, reports show. Since the 1970s, most American industries have demonstrated an upward trend in female employment. Journalism is flatlining.”
“The lack of equity for women in newsroom leadership and journalism #entrepreneurship has been an issue for decades. #WomenDoNews”
Ramshaw agrees, “There is a dearth of women news entrepreneurs; we see women leaving the industry, perhaps because newsrooms and family life are not always simpatico.”
““There is a dearth of women news #entrepreneurs; perhaps because newsrooms and family life are not always simpatico,” says @eramshaw. ”
The daughter of two journalists—her mother was the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the Boston Globe and her father producer of the “MacNeil Lehrer News Hour” on PBS—Ramshaw says there were not many dinner table conversations. “But it was the single most inspiring thing for me,” she says, ‘that my parents loved their work.”
A 2003 graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Ramshaw has always envisioned herself a journalist. And now she is a journalism entrepreneur.
But not many women are launching journalism initiatives. With few exceptions, Ramshaw says, “The new wave of nonprofit media and the people you see there are overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white. There are not many women.”
“@eramshaw says, “The new wave of nonprofit media and the people you see there are overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white.” #diversitymatters”
According to News Leaders, in 2019, “Among online-only newsrooms, women make up 50 percent of salaried workers, a figure that is unchanged from the 2018 survey data. Women make up 41.8 percent of all newsroom workers (in both print/digital and online-only newsrooms) in this year’s survey, up from 41.6 percent last year.”
The study shows, “Overall, people of color represent 21.9 percent of the salaried workforce among newsrooms that responded to this year's Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey. Of the journalists who completed the self-administered survey, 78 percent identified as white, while 7.5 percent identified as African American or Black. Another 7.5 percent identified as biracial or multiracial, and nearly 3 percent identified as Asian.”
Read more in Take The Lead on the 50 Women in Journalism Women Do News project
Indeed whomever represents the media, also choose the sources.
The Global Media Monitoring Project, will update in 2020. It’s most recent data from 2015 of 114 countries in 2015, shows a “growing interest, willingness to engage on issues of gender in the media and commitment to propel change towards media that affirms women’s rights and gender equality objectives. The monitoring shows extremely slow progress in bringing women’s voices to bear in public discourse taking place through the news media. Not only does the news present a male-centric view of the world, it is also marked by gender bias and extensive stereotyping that underpin marginalization, discrimination and violence against girls and women. GMMP 2015 revealed persistent and emerging gaps in gender portrayal and representation in not only traditional (print and broadcast) media, but in new electronic media forms.”
Read more in Take The Lead on invisibility in journalism
According to The GGMMP 2015 report, “Women make up only 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news, exactly as they did in 2010. The gender gap is narrowest in stories on science and health, the major topic of lowest importance on the news agenda occupy-ing only 8% of the overall news space; women make up 35% of the people in news under this topic, in contrast to only 16% in political news stories.”
To correct that skewed representation, Ramshaw sees two distinct goals for The 19th. “The first is to advance equity in this sector by elevating the voices of under-represented women in the media in the U.S. The second is to advance the number of women in news leadership, create a training ground for them that.”
With the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment as the namesake for this journalism entity, Ramshaw says it is a perfect connection because equity is ongoing.
“With the 100th anniversary of the #19th amendment as the namesake for this journalism entity, @eramshaw says it is a perfect connection because #equity is ongoing. ”
“Suffrage is a work in progress,” Ramshaw says, “that will be relevant beyond the centennial.” Honoring the anniversary gives the site a timely connection to its launch. She adds, “I think the name is meant to stand the test of time.”
