I was recently at a conference of the Council on Contemporary Families (contemporaryfamilies.org), a group devoted to getting the press to report accurately when they talk about research on families. One reporter spoke of the difficulty of getting stories about family issues in the paper. Another said that a very nationally prominent newspaper's research on their readership shows that women in their 20s and 30s are particularly unlikely to read the newspaper. The reporter was drawing a connection between the two things--perhaps the newspapers won't print what women are interested in, so they lose women readers. But newspapers are downsizing and going out of business because of reduced readership (particularly as news is available on the web). But the newspapers don't seem to make this link, continuing to see things such as Sports coverage more important than trends in relationships, sex, child rearing, divorce, how families make ends meet, and who is doing the housework, topics that, somehow are still of more interest to women than men. What does this have to do with VanNess's post? She argues that we need new visions of what women's lives can be. I agree. But we also need more respect and importance given to what women's lives and interests are now. The very future of the press may depend upon it!

Paula England