Wellington’s newspaper, the Dominion Post, sucks. Really, it sucks a whole damn lot. It was around before I left but it was new; it is the amalgamation of two previous papers, The Dominion and The Evening Post. The Dom was hardheaded, conservative and business-oriented; the Post was as left-leaning as papers got in NZ. Both (like every damn newspaper in NZ) owned by Rupert Murdoch.
The merger was resisted but went ahead anyway, and the new paper is downright nasty. It kept the Dominion’s ethos, ripping from the Evening Post only its slight tabloidy tendencies and occasional propensity for shallowness (both magnified for the new paper). The new paper really is the worst of both worlds.
Additionally, robbed of the dynamic that you get from two papers, the whole feel of newspaper media coverage is flattened and preprocessed. I don’t like it. Few people do, as far as I can tell.
But I was very unpleasantly surprised to find a big section every Thursday entitled “Woman: A Feast of Fashion & Food”. There’s a Woman section in the newspaper. Hell. I’m sure there was a lot of consternation at the time this was launched, but I wasn’t there then, and I’m here now, and can I say the concept of a Woman section is ridiculous and horrific in equal measure?
I’ve fished out the last two Woman sections. Here’s what they comprise:
Articles:
(Feb 2)
Main feature: Ironing (who is doing it?)
Other features: I’m addicted to buying clothes on eBay; Prenuptial agreements; Scientific research on assessing beauty
(Feb 9)
Main feature: Glossy womens magazines (how have they changed?)
Other features: single people are excluded from stuff, valentine’s Day gift ideas
Regulars: (both weeks)
Intimacy (Neil Rosenthal’s soul-murdering relationship advice column)
In Style (consumer porn, i.e. stuff you can’t afford)
Fashion Talk (gossip from the industry)
Restaurant reviews, Recipes, Why I Love (people talk about stuff they like, ceramics and making furniture these weeks)
It just beggars belief that this is a part of the big newspaper of Wellington, the liberal capital of New Zealand. It reinforces every nasty stereotype of a woman’s role, and its existence affects the journalistic culture, demanding ‘woman’ stories which match and support these stereotypes, perpetuating as well as housing the sexist mythology. Yuck.
Of course, there is no ‘Man’ section of the paper, because that section is clearly ‘Business’ plus ‘Sport’.
Oh, it’s awful. Awful awful awful. Welly people, what’s the history of resistance to this? Maybe another batch of letters to the editor would be worthwhile.
9 thoughts on “[mediawatch] The Woman Section”
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At first, I thought the idea of a woman’s section was a joke. You and I talked about the “liberalness” of our respective cities, and I have to say that there is no way that a woman’s section would fly here, and one of (the two) papers here has a female editor-in-chief.
But as a note, selections from your list could find their ways onto the paper in certain sections. Except ironing. WTF? Really? But then again, obviously there is something about it that we’re COMPLETELY missing. I mean, really, who does it? (you know how I know you’re gay?……)
Morgue, my memory of NZ media entirely (except my beloved and missed Listener) is that it is immature and somewhat embarrassing. The news on TV one as I recall basically told me what I was supposed to think rather than reporting actual news and I just don’t give a **** about the personal lives or relationship between the news presenters….just present the news would/could you?
Almost no-one reads the newspaper in Wellington. It’s an IT capital, we get our news from the net.
The only people who do are over fifty, and still think those sterotypes are true, so they’re just catering to their rapidly dwindling audience.
Thats why the papers merged after all, they couldn’t support two. Soon they won’t be able to support one.
🙂
Munden’s also missed another important demographic who buy print media: the people who buy those “women’s magazines.”
The DomPost is clearly targetting that market with the Thursday edition.
The thing is I *like* to read a newspaper, preferably a newspaper that makes at least a pretence towards objectivity. There is something nice about sharing something through reading a local broadsheet. Given the way the news media is run I guess I will be sticking with the Guardian Weekly.
Actually, mudens, viewed as a standalone business, the Post was profitable. The merger occurred for a variety of reasons, some of which included the notion that one day it might not be; but in and of itself, the Post could certainly still have been toddling along quite happily.
And it is indeed remarkable that They managed to find an Editor who would make me think fondly of Richard Long.
Well I’m not in Wellington these days, but I’ll always love a paper that prints the skeleton crossword.
And just to play devil’s advocate, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea on paper to have a gender issues section, and the housework issue is actually a big deal at the moment on feminist sites like pandagon etc at the moment. So maybe they’re trying, just not always doing a great job.
Some of those articles sound interesting, although I’m sure they’re probably not, just like articles in any part of the paper.
So there. Nice to have you back blogging again mate.
Good to hear from you James, hear your 30th was a blast. Nice one.
I don’t have a problem with a ‘Gender Issues’ section. This isn’t that section. This is a section that says, in its title, Women = Fashion and Food.
They always used to title these sections ‘Lifestyle’ or something, but calling it ‘Woman’… bah.
I should write a strongly-worded letter to the editor.
The dom post isn’t half the paper that the Evening Post was, but it is still better than ‘The Herald’. My biggest gripe with the dom is that is a morning paper. With the post you could read about stuff that had happened that day. The dom is basically out of date by the time you read it. And lets not even get started about the idiotic decision to reprint those Mohammed cartoons.
And the woman section is an abhorrent waste of space. Still, about half the women at work read it. Then again, I basically only read the paper for Tom Scott’s cartoons and the letters to the editor. I get my news from a variety of sources, and apply appropriate viewpoint filters.