Where Are the Women?
Why we need more female newsroom leaders
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Read more stories from prominent female leaders
I doubt I have very many communications majors at Time. I have history majors, politics majors, philosophy majors—so I’m not sure graduation rates of communications majors tells us very much. I have not had trouble finding terrific candidates to hire, both men and women and at all levels of experience, from entry-level reporters to top editors.
Compensation is immensely complex and affected by so many factors that it is hard to make generalizations about gender or anything else; I could argue, for instance, that there were moments in my early career when I was promoted more rapidly than male colleagues in part because of the desire of top editors to have more women in the editorial ranks. My priority is making sure that compensation is fair and reasonable, but there are many, many factors that go into that judgment.
I was lucky enough to have great mentors and models, both men and women. My first editor, when I went from being a fact checker to being a writer, was a woman named Martha Duffy, who was a true pioneer as one of the first female top editors at Time. She was a brilliant editor and great protector of her writers, and was always a role model. But so were Walter Isaacson, Jim Kelly, and other terrific top editors. I think we all approach this job differently; I know my leadership style is different than others, but I expect that is natural everywhere.
Journalism is at such a fascinating moment of expansion and evolution, I think it is vital to learn multiple skills—be multi-lingual, in the sense that you should care about telling great and important stories, and be equally fluent across all platforms.