Roundtable on Women and the Media set for Chicago

I’d like to commend the following report to you. RCC benefited from an engaging report on the progress of the Global Media Monitoring Project that opened our national convention in Little Rock, Arkansas last spring. Dr. Sarah Macharia was our presenter. Manya Brachear served as the host for the Wilbur Awards, RCC’s honoring of secular media, at the 2010 Religion Communicators Congress meeting. Debra Mason, one of the organizers of the Chicago roundtable and Executive Director of Religion Newswriters, will be a keynote speaker at RCC’s 2012 convention in Philadelphia, April 12-14. RCC members hold a genuine interest in realities of the way gender is handled by the media worldwide.

Deb Christian
RCC President

Noted journalists and media and gender specialists will be part of the panel at the roundtable “Who Makes the News: A Global Review” to take place at Columbia College Chicago on March 6, 2012, at 6:00 p.m.

The event is being co-sponsored by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)–North America, and Columbia College Chicago. It’s an opportunity for journalism students to consider issues of women and the media from a global perspective.

The roundtable will help journalists of the future explore the global realities of gender and media, from the journalists and newsmakers and their bosses, to the content and sources in news stories. It will highlight the results of WACC’s 2010 report of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP)—the world’s most extensive research on gender in news media in the U.S. and around the world.

Roundtable panellists include:

• Manya Brachear, religion reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Brachear also has written for Time magazine, The Dallas Morning News, Beliefnet.com and the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
• Sarah Macharia, WACC Global staff, coordinator of the GMMP, and editor of Media and Gender Monitor.
• June Nicholson, director of graduate studies and associate Professor in the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, and lead editor for The Edge of Change: Women in the 21st Century Press.

The panel will be moderated by Norma Green, who is a professor in the journalism faculty at Columbia College Chicago and director of the graduate program there. A representative from the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) will also participate on the panel. The Foundation has published the findings of a major study on the topic in its “Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media.”

Working journalists and members of the public are also welcome to attend the roundtable. It will take place at Stage Two, 618 S. Michigan Ave., 2nd floor (building SE).

WACC is an international organization that promotes communication for social change. For more information on the roundtable, please contact WACC North America President Sheila George at sheilageorge100@hotmail.com.