Women in Media: Not One Size Fits All The state of women leadership in student journalism at Long Beach State University.
by Matt James
Bella Arnold
Paris Barraza Kaleen Luu
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nyone who’s read a newspaper, listened to the radio or watched cable news can tell you that the media can be as male and white as the back of a USPS delivery truck. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, 48% of American newsroom employees are both male and white. That’s in stark contrast to 34% of employees from all industries combined. However, student media at Long Beach State shows that
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might not be the case for long. The same study also shows that this problem is less pronounced the younger those employees are in regard to gender. For newsroom employees aged 18-29, only 38% are white men compared to 56% for employees 50 and older. “It’s a matter of intersectionality. One woman from this minority community has a different experience from a woman of a different minority community,”
said Paris Barraza, arts and life editor at The Daily Forty-Niner. A woman’s experience in any industry can be drastically different depending on factors such as race, ethnicity and socioeconomic background just to name a few. While the industry is trending in a positive direction for diversity, it still has a long way to go. “It feels like two things working against me sometimes,” said Kaleen Luu, 22 West Magazine’s very own editor-in-chief. “There’s
Photos courtesy of students interviewed
