Women v. the Shepherd Express

In early April, I sent a letter to the editor of Milwaukee’s so called “alternative” weekly, the Shepherd Express, in response to a column by Joel McNally. Since they didn’t publish it in their subsequent editions and are unlikely to do so, I have published it below.

My beef was not with McNally, who wrote about the irony of a jury finding former Milwaukee Police Chief Art Jones guilty of “reverse” discrimination for failing to promote 17 white male lieutenants to captain. (In his seven-year term, Jones promoted to captain 21 white men and 19 white women or men and women of color.) But a line in McNally’s column reminded me of the Shepherd’s own sorry history of discrimination against women and sparked what Elizabeth Cady Stanton once called a “woman’s rights convulsion.”

Stanton’s words will be immediately recognizable to any woman who has faced or endured sexism. Writing to her great friend Susan B. Anthony about some outrage against women back in the 1800s, Stanton declared: “Susan, if I do not find the use of my tongue on this issue soon, I shall die of a woman’s rights convulsion!” (paraphrased but pretty close)

This one’s for you, Elizabeth!

Letter to the Editor, Shepherd Express
413 N. 2nd Street, Milwaukee, WI 53203

Dear Editor:

In your April 7 edition, my favorite columnist Joel McNally wrote about a seemingly previous newspaper job: “The best jobs at the newspaper, including the political reporter, the movie critic and most of the columnists, are still held by white males.”

Mr. McNally is far too reliable a progressive voice to be tweaking his former employer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, on this account. After all, despite its regrettable corporate hegemony, the Journal Sentinel does publish a wide range of women’s voices, from witty TV critic Joanne Weintraub to business writer Tannette Johnson-Elie, from architecture maven Whitney Gould to book critic Geeta Sharma Jensen, from chief obit writer Amy Rabideau Silvers to arts commentator Jackie Loohauis, from Wisconsin treasure Jackie Mitchard to op-edsters Barbara Miner, Maureen Dowd, Kathleen Parker and others.

Could McNally possibly be referring to the supposedly progressive, alternative Shepherd Express, which in its 24 year history has managed to have only one woman – one – the talented Anthe Rhodes, in an editorial position that isn’t preceded by the word “assistant”? Where the only woman columnist in almost 25 years has been a forgotten byline who briefly contributed the painfully self-conscious column called “Girl”? Where the turnover of women is mind-blowingly swift while the old white boy mainstays are destined to die at their desks?

I mean no disrespect to the few women who valiantly contribute to your paper. Overall, however, it is a continuing scandal that Milwaukee’s major alternative weekly serves women so poorly. If McNally can’t say it openly, I will: you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Jamakaya

I encourage other women – and men – to let the Shepherd Express know what they think about their shameful exclusion of women’s voices. Email them at: editor@shepherd-express.com, fax them at (414) 276-3312, or send a letter to the address above.

BREAKING NEWS! — Michael Horne reports on his milwaukeeworld.com web site that Catherine Nelson, the Shepherd’s “Associate Publisher and CFO” of the last few years is no longer with the paper. Her name is off the masthead and Publisher Lou Fortis says only that she doesn’t work there anymore.

In February (scroll down to the fourth item in the link), Horne reported that the Shepherd Express (Alternative Publications Inc.) is the subject of three EEOC complaints by former women staff members. Gee, I can’t imagine why . . .

How about catching up to the 21st century, boys?