I’m at the Women, Action and the Media, or WAM conference at MIT this weekend and wanted to try my hand at some live-blogging. Right now, I’m in the “How to Work in the Mainstream Media—and Why You Want to” panel starring Rebecca Traister (Salon), Kara Jesella (New York Times), Lyn Harris (Glamour, New York Times) and Ada Calhoun (Babble). Mostly, I’m here because I was interested in what Traister might have to say, since I admire her work at Broadsheet. [I’ve never really thought of Salon as mainstream media? It that wrong?]

I feel like, especially because of the theme of this panel, it would have been awesome to see a woman of color on it. The color line in mainstream media is pretty clear. [This is why the Ethnic Media panel later this afternoon will be awesome.]

“The problem of thinking of your work as some kind of “art”, is that it allows people to pay you less. It’s work. When you’re a journalist, you’re running a business. When you think of it as art, you’re willing to do it for less,” Lynn Harris.

“Journalism = plumbing,” says Traister, she’s talking about building your skills.

Defense of glossy magazines going on right now: “People complain about the lipstick ads, but the lipstick ads are funding the [journalism].”

Sticking feminist ideas into beauty articles? Okay, need to relocate. I know a lot of freelance writers make money to do the work they really care about by writing articles for glossy magazines, but I’m not so interested in this idea. I admit that by leaving early, I am probably missing the talk about pitching more serious articles to mainstream media.
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Decided to switch to Youth Media panel, already many more people of color present and speaking. (Relief.) Programs present: Books of Hope, Reel Grrls, and By Any Media Necessary.

“Making media that matters is what separates Reel Girls program from media education in school setting. Interesting. Starting with message and moving to tech ….” advice from Samantha Muilenberg, youth media maker.

Five steps of media literacy by Cara Lisa Powers of By Any Media Necessary: Consume [meeting kids where they are, watching media that they are watching], analyze [looking at the socio-economic environment that media lives in related to youth], respond [crafting a response to media or problem], compose/produce [make media], distribute.

Young people on this panel were asked what kept them coming back to their programs and the work, and they are talking about their mentors, being respected as a journalist and having a community. [Really impressed by Soul Brown and crew of Books of Hope, a youth literacy project that has young people publish their own books.]

Ran out of time but wanted to bring up the issue of providing mental health support to young people whose trauma is stirred up by creating media around it and ways for youth media to connect horizontally—getting youth media to interact more with each other instead of just mainstream media.
—Neelanjana Banerjee, YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia editor