‘The Future Of Media’: Looking Kinda Male

A glance into the “future.” Image by Screenshot/Twitter

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy March 2, 2017

The Hollywood Reporter has a cover story on CNN’s lineup. CNN producer Josiah Daniel Ryan was pleased, tweeting as follows: “The future of media looks like this.”

The cover already might have Caused Controversy, but that “future of media” bit, evocative of “the future is female,” probably put things over the edge: The internet has collective pointed out that all five people on the cover are men. The future of media? Dudes.

So. Sexism? You betcha. But I’m at a loss here. Call-outs of the sexism du jour have not gotten us far. Someone offends, Twitter responds, life moves on, power structures intact.

And it’s passé these days, even in feminist circles, to care about women’s representation in elite professions. How does it help ordinary women just trying to get by if there is a woman on a cover like that? What’s more difficult to reckon with is that even if the presence of a woman doesn’t much help, the absence can still hurt.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

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