Jill Abramson: When Will We Stop Saying 'First Woman to (fill in the blank)'
IT was the Platonic ideal of the ladies' lunch. There was chicken salad, parfait and blue Tiffany gift boxes. There was the first woman president, her friend Louise and, though we did not know it for certain, the first female solo network news anchor.
This was Monday at the annual Matrix Awards, given to women who are leaders in the New York media and communications business. As the first woman to be Washington bureau chief at The Times, and then managing editor, I got one award, for the newspaper category. But all the firsts in the room seemed to pale next to the giant firstness about to be announced: that Katie Couric was moving from host of the "Today" show on NBC to anchor of "CBS Evening News."
The next day, Ms. Couric said the chance to make history as the first solo network anchorwoman was not the decisive factor in her decision to join CBS. She did say that it was a "cool idea," and that her 10-year-old-daughter, Carrie, told her to jump ship because it would make her "the first woman in that job by herself."
Surprisingly to me, in the immense media coverage of her departure, one of the longest and least surprising goodbyes in television history, many stories did not lead with the "first woman" angle. Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, didn't make a big deal of it either. Ms. Couric's "Today" audience appeal, which helped garner NBC some $600 million in advertising last year (compared with about $156 million for "CBS Evening News") and her hefty pay package (weighing in at about $13 million a year) seemed to get far more attention.
At a time when women are running Fortune 500 companies and the State Department, and writing Supreme Court opinions, perhaps we have stopped pushing the save-get key for "the first woman to become _____." It seemed a pretty giant step for womankind, but maybe I was stuck in a retro mindset.
On the issue of the bigness of the firstness of Katie Couric, I found opinion was divided, and not along predictable gender or age lines. "I think what's unexpected is that you keep reading it will happen and hearing it will happen, and then when it happens you find yourself genuinely thrilled on behalf of women," said Nora Ephron, one of the few female movie directors.
Some of my younger friends, male and female, both inside and outside journalism, were far less impressed at the prospect of the "first woman solo anchor." First of all, the network news shows are all suffering from declining, aging audiences. (Bob Schieffer, who has served for the past year in the CBS anchor chair, jokes that his pickup of viewers over the last year may reflect people who died and left their TV's on.) ...
Read entire article at NYT
This was Monday at the annual Matrix Awards, given to women who are leaders in the New York media and communications business. As the first woman to be Washington bureau chief at The Times, and then managing editor, I got one award, for the newspaper category. But all the firsts in the room seemed to pale next to the giant firstness about to be announced: that Katie Couric was moving from host of the "Today" show on NBC to anchor of "CBS Evening News."
The next day, Ms. Couric said the chance to make history as the first solo network anchorwoman was not the decisive factor in her decision to join CBS. She did say that it was a "cool idea," and that her 10-year-old-daughter, Carrie, told her to jump ship because it would make her "the first woman in that job by herself."
Surprisingly to me, in the immense media coverage of her departure, one of the longest and least surprising goodbyes in television history, many stories did not lead with the "first woman" angle. Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, didn't make a big deal of it either. Ms. Couric's "Today" audience appeal, which helped garner NBC some $600 million in advertising last year (compared with about $156 million for "CBS Evening News") and her hefty pay package (weighing in at about $13 million a year) seemed to get far more attention.
At a time when women are running Fortune 500 companies and the State Department, and writing Supreme Court opinions, perhaps we have stopped pushing the save-get key for "the first woman to become _____." It seemed a pretty giant step for womankind, but maybe I was stuck in a retro mindset.
On the issue of the bigness of the firstness of Katie Couric, I found opinion was divided, and not along predictable gender or age lines. "I think what's unexpected is that you keep reading it will happen and hearing it will happen, and then when it happens you find yourself genuinely thrilled on behalf of women," said Nora Ephron, one of the few female movie directors.
Some of my younger friends, male and female, both inside and outside journalism, were far less impressed at the prospect of the "first woman solo anchor." First of all, the network news shows are all suffering from declining, aging audiences. (Bob Schieffer, who has served for the past year in the CBS anchor chair, jokes that his pickup of viewers over the last year may reflect people who died and left their TV's on.) ...