There’s a lot we can say about what we aim to accomplish with Video Dog. Our fragile hopes and dreams. Our desire to bring cool TV snippets and original shorts and news gotchas and miscellaneous fluff to the masses. Our fondest wish is that you’ll join us, sending in your own homemade videos, local news media atrocities and stupid pet photos. But we’ll keep this short: This isn’t a place for telling, it’s a place for showing — showing you the worst political obfuscations, along with the best joke of the night on “Letterman,” the worst local news teaser ever, the highlight of last night’s “Survivor” or just some looped footage of newscasters falling down during a hurricane. So, welcome! And stay tuned.
Broadsheet started, as many things at Salon do, over e-mail. A member of the staff would pick up on a piece of news about women that was funny or horrifying or exciting but was not getting many column inches in the rest of the press. Sometimes those e-mails turned into stories, but often the item would be small enough that it wouldn’t merit its own feature at Salon, either. Still, the staff comments — hilarious, angry, shocked, pleased — would zing back and forth by e-mail chain. Without realizing it, we’d begun our own internal blog, with a circulation of about a dozen people, that paid attention to the newsworthy triumphs and travails of what we used to call the fairer sex.
So here we are, carving out a new niche in our ever-evolving publication. Our aim is to cast a spotlight on news that puts women in the center, because while we’ve come a long way, a quick scan of bylines and stories in most major newspapers will show you that women are still not always being seen — or read. Broadsheet will be taking the ladies seriously, whether that means tracking news about how our rights are holding up, how well we’re representing ourselves politically, or how the advertising world has decided to address us, what kinds of health advances are ahead of us — all the news of our (usually) two-steps-forward, one-step-back march to equality. Broadsheet is about contradictions — the fact that opinion and editorial pages are dominated by men, alongside the fact that the most powerful editorial section of all, that of the New York Times, is run by a woman, Gail Collins. That’s the Broadsheet paradox: We’ve got problems, we’ve got some power, we’ll talk about both.
We’ll also have celebrity dish and possibly fashion news. And jokes. Women are funny.
Why “Broadsheet”? For one thing, we like the word “broad,” which for us conjures up images of Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson, ferociously pounding out copy on deadline in “His Girl Friday,” her tailored suit wrinkle-free and sexy. But the term also applies to our content. The issues we’ll tackle are limitless, really, given the fact that our subject includes half the world’s population. Katie Holmes’ pregnancy, Harriet Miers’ Supreme Court nomination, the FDA’s stalling over Plan B — we’ve got something to say about all of it. Our goal is to be opinionated about topics that affect women, but also a filter by which we can look at the news from a (mostly) female point of view.
Which brings us to your inevitable question: What about men? Where do they fit in here? Broadsheet believes that any discussion of “women’s issues” must include men — hey, they still hold most of the power in the world, and, well, almost all of us live with them, work with them, love them. So expect plenty of editorial input from our male colleagues, especially Farhad Manjoo, who has been one of the biggest boosters of Broadsheet since the beginning. Men are crucial to any discussion and we want to bring them into the conversations we’ll be having every day. And if Salon’s history of spirited debate between readers and editors is any indication, we’re sure you guys will show up in our comments area too and tell us what you think.
Welcome, everyone, to this new corner of Salon.
As we begin the post-Labor Day marathon race to the 2004 presidential election, Salon is curious to know how its readers are sizing up the field of candidates. Who do you love or loathe? Who has the best chance of taking the White House? Here’s a chance to go beyond the cut-and-dried answers to telephone pollsters. Tell us in your own words how you feel about the candidates for the highest office in the land.
We start today with a letter from a reader in Maryland, responding to Joan Walsh’s recent story on Howard Dean.
Ms. Walsh:
Well, I’m going to subscribe to Salon today, mostly because of your column about Gov. Dean. It hit the journalistic bullseye.
You describe an experience and a weighing of values that parallels my own — and thousands like me. I am a 63-year-old white guy, Stanford-educated, military veteran (where I showed up for duty every day), veteran of Howard University and the riots in D.C. in 1968, a husband-father, a small-business owner, an environmental conservationist, a mixture of Independent Jeffordite, Libertarian, Green and Democrat. After years in the political wilderness, a hold-my-nose-for-Clinton voter and contributor who felt betrayed by his narcissistic betrayals, choking on my own emotional rage about the unanswered rape from the right and its Shrub, I started to look at MoveOn this March — a fresh-air experience. As you probably know, MoveOn sponsored an early “vote” on Democratic candidates and I read all the dialogues and candidate statements and found Dean. I voted for Kerry in the straw because I too was ready to bypass Dean as unelectable (Dean was second to Kucinich), but Dean’s words were so compelling on DeanforAmerica that I went to a Dean MeetUp with my wife who predicted we’d be among teenie granolas, but found ourselves among an amazing, value-hungry, angry, polite, articulate, curious, slice of 75 people in a Maryland suburban storefront. From there I began to encourage my friends to take a look, to collect more information, attend the 4,500 person rally in Falls Church, Va. — home of Ollie North — on a hot Saturday afternoon in late August. I now plan to cut my consulting work to near zero and to work for Dean beginning this September.
I don’t agree with everything Gov. Dean says or will say; he wouldn’t be electable if I did! But, and this is so critical, he is his own man, he has a moral center, he will tell the truth as he sees it, he will inspire community rather than division. I know all too well what he will face from the right, within his own party and from the Republican vipers. Every once in a while he will get the sort of journalism reflected in your column — and that is enough.
Thanks.
Timothy Alexander
Chevy Chase, Md.
