FROM THE EDITORS or the two of us, the past few months have revolved around a unique opportunity — an opportunity to create lasting change within Paly. Spurred on by an innovation grant that dared Paly journalists to come up with a novel idea to improve the journalism program, we decided to create a special women-focused edition of Viking in addition to our standard six issues. Featuring exclusively womencentric stories, the issue aims to address some of the shocking disparities we saw in representation of female and male sports within the magazine and in the greater sports world. We independently conducted a diversity audit of the last five years of Viking and the last 14 issues of Sports Illustrated and found that only 7.2% of Viking’s pages have featured women-centric stories; the figure rises to only 9.1% for Sports Illustrated. The pattern is harrowing; we’ve long known that sports media in particular is a key contributor to the sexism present in sports culture, but we hadn’t imagined that the imbalance could be so extreme. This disparity is one that devalues the world of female athletics, and promotes the limiting perspective that sports are by men, for men, to be enjoyed only by men. We’ve often felt that our feminist principles have made us outsiders in the world of sports, and while at times it felt that undertaking this project would only alienate us more, we both began journalism to write the stories that we thought would matter most, not those that required the least amount of work. It’s hard to tackle the inequality that we see present in the entire world, but the magazine is something we can have a direct impact on. As we’ve approached the end of our tenure in Viking, we’ve felt the uncertainty of Viking’s future looming — what will our staff-writers do with the magazine we’ve worked so hard to improve? Yet the women’s edition has given us something to latch onto; we intend for it to serve as a wakeup call not only to our own staff, but to the entire journalism program at Paly. The Women’s Issue can, perhaps, set the expectation for Viking next year, show our writers and readers that the magazine should not be allowed to revert to its old ways without facing criticism. And beyond serving as a call to action — something to inspire future journalists once we’ve left Paly — we hope it’ll be something that can prove that even in high school, with limited resources, it’s possible to make something bold and new, something better than what the world as a whole offers. When the shelter-in-place order took form and schools were shut down, many of the ways we privately imagined the Women’s Issue taking form became unrealistic. And certainly, we doubted the relevancy of the project — who cares, anymore, about a sports magazine filled with stories about female athletes?
F
But when we think back to the story ideas session held just eight days before the announcement of Paly’s emergency closure, we remember feeling for the first time that this magazine would undoubtedly become a reality. After all the doubts we’d had while writing the grant application, and having been disappointed by the low turnout to the initial meetings, our faith was restored when our brainstorming session ran almost two hours, and the whiteboard we’d used to write down story ideas was so full that nearly every square inch was marked by red or green ink. The Women’s Issue was, for some time, our small private joy. We knew how much we cared about its creation, and about women’s sports — for us, the magazine was an opportunity to correct long-standing injustices within the sports world, ones we’d been exposed to both as sports fans and as sports journalists. However, it was essential for us to prove that other people could care about the magazine, too. When the project received the grant funding, that mission was fulfilled: people wanted this, and could rally behind it. Victory at last. But we want the Women’s Issue to be much more than our own personal triumph. A magazine gains its meaning once it leaves its editors’ hands and makes its way into the world. We’re proud of the staff we’ve assembled, and we know the simple existence of these stories in the world represents us taking a stand. And while we think the simple act of putting these stories into the world is a powerful statement, we want certain audiences to benefit from the magazine, too. We want young journalists to see this can be done, that the first high school sports magazine in the country can also become the first high school sports magazine in the country to represent women in an unprecedented way. And we want those in Viking to read the Women’s Issue, to see in it the precedent we hope to be setting for years to come. This is our legacy, what we leave behind when we leave Viking. The future of Viking, the future of sports journalism in Paly and beyond, was reason enough to fight for the issue. Although it started as a pet project dreamed up in midnight conversations between two best friends, we always wanted the Women’s Issue to grow bigger than either one of us: we want the Women’s Issue to help form the future. Yours,
Sofia Bliss-Carrascosa
Yael Sarig