I’d first like to repeat my compliment to Stephanie Rosenbloom. I think she is a very good writer crafting informative stories that are fun to read within the contextual boundaries of her STYLE and Fashion beat. Maybe I should be embarrassed to enjoy her work, but I like good puff pastries and candy bars too. Guilty pleasures. The fact that her paper is the apex of main stream journalism in the US and enormously influential in bolstering the USian cultural status quo may detract from her work, and that is central to Leslie’s criticism.

I think that the story as printed was well placed in FASHION. Leslie’s post is a nail-gun on full automatic driving many points home. Among the most relevant is this:

I have five daughters, all of whom think coding is a normal thing to do. They laugh at this continued attempt by the MSM to be defined by their gender. Sorry Frank, this article is not a move in the right direction. This is bullshit. Samo© Samo© A piece of shit on the kitchen counter or a piece of shit on the work bench of a home carpentry corner is still a piece of shit.

And, agreeing with this on its own terms, the article would be just as stinky in the Tech section as in Fashion. But I don’t entirely agree. This is a story about young people, basically girls informed by their privileged class American experience, enjoying the use of expensive appliances, passing the time creatively. As Leslie points out, the gender bound cultural setting…

They make a few extra dollars writing online articles and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

… is cloying at best. Yet, as Jon points out, our goal is to ease the integration of technology into the daily lives of people. Rosenbloom’s story is about one area where young people have accomplished that as the quotidian interstices of the web become more and more woven through our lives.

Leslie quotes Chomsky,

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Clearly the American Revolution will not be fought in the layout and semantic context of the New York Times. The tinkle of wine glasses, the clatter of cutlery on fine china, the conversation of markets will drown out the information passed in the streets.

And it’s one if by land, two if by sea
Three if by guile and duplicity
Brookline

This started as a comment on Mary Hodder’s post (via Frank) about a NYT article on Girls in Tech titled Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain. Her main point being that the article was in the Fashion section of the

And just to be a pain in the …., aren’t these kinds of things what many of us (me most days) would prefer that technology stories become more about ?

Heck, I know almost nothing tangible about technology, and virtually zero about coding, but it sure seems to me that amongst geeks technology is essentially as much about fashion and style (particularly if you can think about all the performace comparisons in a large sense), albeit in a somewhat twisted way to date, as it is about social or societal power.

1. The sidebar in the NYT appears in the order you listed, but it scans better there than it does in my comments lay-out… the page composition lessens the subjective distance, I think, between “World” and “Style.” The article in question was on page 1 of section G of the dead trees edition of today’s paper, better placement perhaps than the page 7 of section C technology articles. In fact, since my quibble is about layout, you might want to take a peek at the TECHNOLOGY link. You’ll see that Rosenbloom’s “Fashion” story is listed at the bottom of the 2/21/2008 Technology index page.
2. Ms. Rosenbloom writes for STYLE. It’s her beat. The emphasis on beat journalism is shifting all across the country, but the NYT today seems to pretty much segregate their contributors by section. Rosenbloom’s work frequently has a technology focus, but the emphasis on people and popular culture manifestation makes it well placed in STYLE. TECHNOLOGY articles in today’s paper were written by people named: Steve, Steven, Jesse (disambiguation – Jesse is male), Miguel, Michael, Saul and Stephanie. Some of these are cross linked from the BUSINESS section. Stephanie’s story is cross linked from FASHION. (All the Fashion writers today are female, and the rest of the STYLE sections breaks out a 2 to 1 ratio women to men writers).

Today the TECHNOLOGY stories are boring BS about companies and products. The STYLE stories are about people, their homes and their lives. To the extent that the journalists themselves live in isolated silos of beat journalism, and their editors are happy each with his or her own fiefdom, I think that this is how they’ll be publishing the paper for some time to come. I think the real challenge at the NYT comes down to integrating women tech writers and women science writers. (Today’s SCIENCE section included stories by Dennis, Kenneth, Thom, Keith, Martin, William, and Warren).

It’s not that fashion, style or food aren’t important, but if this is really the same as technology then why is the NYTimes sidebar, for browsing topic areas ordered as follows:

# World
# U.S.

* Politics
* Washington
* Education

# N.Y./Region
# Business
# Technology
# Sports
# Science
# Health
# Opinion
# Arts

* Books
* Movies
* Music
* Television
* Theater

# Style

* Dining & Wine
* Fashion & Style
* Home & Garden
* Weddings/ Celebrations

# Travel

What there is serious news? The stuff at the top. What is more for play, not serious, not as important? The stuff at the bottom.

Technology is #5, and gets a fully bolded category. Fashion is under #11, as the second sub-item in light grey.

I think that says it all.

These girls are just fashion makers by that standard. People respect power, and coding is a powerful position to be in. I want girls to see that power and reach for it. Not think, “oh, what I do is just frivolous.”

Can you imagine an article about boys 15-18 who make code for design items like things in second life, world of warcraft, webpages and myspace pages, being in the fashion section?

I really don’t think the NYTimes is doing women a favor here.

Regarding the sections of the paper, lots of people just read by section. You are right that girls may (this is a stereotype but why not, both our posts are full of them) be more likely to read an article in the fashion pages.. but do you think they will think, “yeah, I want to be a coder?” But boys who read about coders in the tech section are often dying to do that.

mary

mary