Julia Wallace was among the first women who decided to become a journalist in the post-Watergate era in 1978. According to reports, a flood of gender discrimination lawsuits in the 1970s forced newsrooms around the country to employ women.
Wallace, the managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1992-1996, is the Frank Russell Chair in the Business of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She’s also the co-author of “There’s No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned About What It Takes to Lead.”
Wallace says, “It’s not a particularly great story. The reality is there’s been very slow progress and in the last few years actually some regression. In the early 2000s, when Ann Marie Lipinski was managing editor at the Chicago Tribune, she started something called the Large Ladies Group, made up of women managing editors at large-circulation papers. There are fewer women running large-circulation newspapers today than there were when she started the group. I think the industry became so consumed with financial challenges after the Great Recession that they put diversity on the back burner.”
To know more about the role of women in journalism, the future of the industry and her new book, reporters had an in-depth interview with her.
You now teach courses on the future of news, new business models and innovative ways of thinking about journalism. The internet has disrupted the news business model, causing a massive decline in print journalism. Where is journalism headed?
I’m very positive about parts of it and concerned about others. We’re seeing some of the best national reporting that has ever existed, as well as niche reporting that didn’t exist in the old model. There are plenty of new, interesting things happening, including start-ups providing content that didn’t exist in the past. The problem is local news. Local newspapers are withering and dying.
Journalism jobs declined by 25% between 2008 and 2018. What advice do you give your journalism students about job prospects?
Our students have no trouble finding jobs, but the jobs might be different than what they envisioned. It might be tough for them to get a job as a beat reporter at a newspaper, but there are jobs in journalism. I graduated from Northwestern University in 1978. Afternoon newspapers were closing when I graduated. Chicago Daily News closed in 1978. So I faced a similar situation of not knowing what the future would hold in terms of job security. What I tell my students is you can’t expect to go one place and stay for 40 years.
What do you think about the new Facebook news service?
I think tech has not been a great ally in the past to news. So we’ll see. The media companies I’ve worked for have been talking to social media platforms for the last 20 years about being compensated. I haven’t met with Facebook personally, but my newspapers have. It’s a bit hollow to hear Facebook’s proposal now that they’ve captured so much of journalism’s revenue.
Can we trust tech companies with the news?
It’s clear is that big tech companies don’t have the same values as journalists. People get into journalism to pursue the truth and many view it as a public service. I don’t think you can say the same about the tech industry.
Do you have concerns about so-called fake news?
Without a doubt, the internet has contributed to the proliferation of fake news. It’s just easier for fake news to be disseminated because of social media.
