THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502040028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 121 lines
AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS entered the 1990s with a tough mission: Publish something that even Thelma and Louise would stop to read.
That command came from the growing legion of women that had given up the daily newspaper habit. Between family and work there was no time for the paper, they said, especially since they rarely saw themselves or the things that interested them on its pages.
``The whole problem of appealing to women is an issue all newspapers are wrestling with,'' said Elise S. Burroughs, publications director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. ``All their readership is so diverse. And their non-readership is so diverse.''
How to woo back reluctant women readers was the question. Most newspapers responded by beefing up their coverage of women and their issues in their regular news pages.
A smaller number - little more than 100 of the country's 1,700 daily newspapers - took the more-controversial route and started publishing separate pages or sections aimed at women readers.
These ``modern'' women's sections bristled at comparisons to the mostly disappeared society or women's pages of the past. Instead, they largely tried for substantive reports on family, workplace and personal issues important to many women.
Still, critics denounced them as second-class ``ghettos'' for women's news. Supporters just as staunchly defended them for getting women's issues into print in a time- and space-saving format - a section they could call their own.
The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star tried it both ways. They began publishing a Sunday tabloid insert, Hampton Roads Woman, in November 1991, and followed it up in 1993 by establishing a Women, Family and Children Team of reporters. HRW died last week from a lack of advertising, 12 issues into its fourth year, but similar sections live on elsewhere, including Phoenix; Cleveland; Lexington, Ky.; and Bridgeport, Conn.
``It was something of a fad two, three years ago, after several people looked at readership numbers and decided there was a gap between men and women readers,'' said Michael P. Smith, first vice president of the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors (AASFE). A PAPER WITHIN THE PAPER
The grandmommy of these sections, seen as the national pacesetter, is the 4-year-old ``Womanews'' section in the Chicago Tribune. It runs eight to 10 broadsheet pages each Sunday, including its own page of classified ads, and uses the paper's regular staff writers, freelancers and reader-written essays to supplement its lone full-time writer-columnist.
``They really felt there was a need for it, that there were women's issues not in the paper,'' said Womanews editor Marla Krause.
She said they consider Womanews a ``paper within the paper,'' and story topics range widely: business, fashion, health, politics, abortion, domestic violence, self-esteem programs for young girls, women making differences in other people's lives, even sports.
``I think there was a fear that it would be insulting,'' said Krause, who moved over from the paper's regular news staff. ``A fear that it may be going back to the old-time women's pages. . . . That it would be fluffy.''
Instead, Womanews may be influencing the rest of the paper - the main news section recently showcased a series of stories on a single working mother. ``It's the kind of thing that a couple of years ago may have been in the lifestyles section,'' said Smith of the AASFE.
Statistics are hard to come by, but Smith said not many such sections have started up lately. One that has is ``Hers,'' a Sunday tabloid in the Providence Journal-Bulletin in Rhode Island that began publishing in October.
``We started ours for the same reason I guess everyone else started theirs: for the diminishing women readership,'' said Hers Editor Pam Thomas.
Women who dropped their newspaper subscriptions told the Journal-Bulletin that they didn't have time to read it on weekday mornings before racing to work or in the evening after the umpteenth load of laundry, and they were tired of that defeated feeling each day when they dumped their unread papers into the recycling bin. They also wanted to find the news they sought in one place in the paper, in a section they could set aside and read over several days if need be.
Hers adds to its paper's news mix stories about women's health, jobs and careers, and consumer and shopping issues, with staff writers voluntarily rotating in a few months at a time to work on the 24-page tabloid. Not all women welcomed it - one disgusted reader said: ``Believe it or not, I can read the New York Times.'' But Thomas said the section isn't aimed at women like her, but at those who typically don't even get to the paper until 10 p.m.
And it's apparently being read. One week they printed a phone number for free recycling guides in a brief item all but hidden on page 4. The next day, swamped workers in the city recycling office spent the entire day answering calls for the guide.
``I'm certainly hoping this is only the first step'' in raising interest in women's issues at her newspaper, Thomas said. COVERAGE THROUGHOUT
Smith of the AASFE said special sections in Sunday papers don't affect circulation much, since that's the day of the week when women have the most time to read. Some papers publish their sections in midweek; others have something every day. But where readership really has climbed, he said, is where coverage of women and women's issues is increased throughout the paper.
That's what the Saint Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota did, and in a few years wiped out the gap between its men and women readers. The 278,000-circulation daily increased its education and health reporters, two areas of high interest to many women. It added a full-time child-care and workplace-issues reporter. It added a ``women in business'' beat with a weekly column on Sunday.
When the women's volleyball coach recently was fired by the University of Minnesota, followed by charges she was evaluated more harshly than her male colleagues, the story was on the front page no less than five times in seven weeks. Five years ago, Managing Editor Ken Doctor said, the report would've been a tiny one buried deep inside the sports section. Ten years ago, it might not have made the paper at all.
``I think that the most important priority is leveling the reading field for men and women in American newspapers,'' Doctor said. ``We're saying they shouldn't be relegated to the features section or the women's section.''
Smith agrees.
``You need to not just fix one section but to fix entire papers,'' he said. ``Because newspapers haven't done a very good job of reflecting the wider community.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Hampton Roads Woman is gone, but women's issues are front and
center.
by CNB