The feminist blogosphere erupted this week in a brief but intense conflagration over a New York Times story about BlogHer, the annual conference for female bloggers held this year in San Francisco. “Blogging’s Glass Ceiling” was written by Times staffer Kara Jesella and appeared in the Times’ Sunday Styles section, a week after the conclusion of BlogHer. In it, Jesella reported on the frustrations of some of the assembled writers about the lack of respect they receive in the Wild West of the Internet, a frontier that still whirs away on masculine energy, despite the fact that nearly as many women as men surf it every day.

According to some ticked critics of the Times, a lack of respect for female bloggers was etched into Jesella’s piece itself.

Among Feministe blogger PhysioProf’s complaints was that the story was published in the Styles section, the section of the paper reserved for trend pieces, drink recipes, society photos and wedding announcements. In other words, the girl part of the paper.

PhysioProf also called out Jesella for her clichéd lede (about BlogHer attendees taking over the men’s rooms in the conference hotel), her reportorial focus on details that were female (there were lactation and changing rooms), superficial (women applying blush and eye shadow) and ridiculous (self-helpy affirmations posted in the bathroom stalls like “You are perfect”). She was also angry about Jesella’s decision to draw attention to the emotional, sometimes weepy panels that took place during the gathering, and the piece’s description of how the conference had “moved on” from last year’s Kathy Sierra-inspired focus on how women are treated on the Internet, to discussions of how bloggers can increase their influence, reputation and profit.

Over at the popular feminist blog Jezebel, Megan Carpentier pointed out the disparity between the Times’ coverage of BlogHer and Netroots Nation, the gathering of political bloggers that was held, quite unfortunately, on the same weekend as BlogHer.

“Was a panel discussion on the use of profanity in political blogging [a Times story that ran about Netroots] of more pressing importance to Times readers than Michelle Obama’s first blog post or the aforementioned discussion of how to get taken seriously as a woman political blogger?” Carpentier wondered, in reference to two brief references in Jesella’s piece. “Or is the Times just trying to prove the point of the BlogHer founders and users — that women just don’t get taken quite as seriously as men?”

Well, perhaps not trying. But succeeding, even accidentally, in proving a series of crucial points about the state of gender and online discourse in 2008.

The white-hot fury over the placement of Jesella’s piece was a little overblown. As Carpentier rightly pointed out, the Styles section recently ran a long piece on a gaggle of young male D.C. political bloggers. Additionally, Jesella — who has cowritten a book about how Sassy, the feminist magazine of the 1990s, changed her life — is on staff at the Styles section. If she lobbied to cover the BlogHer convention then her work on it would, by dint of her position, go in Styles. Read the rest of this entry »