yes, I thought of this too after I posted. It's true. The difference is that I pass along my career entree in a less formal way and there are more ways into the writing profession. Without a union card, you CAN'T be an electrician, so family tie is very important (or was, if our corrrespondent is right about the decline of this practice). with journalism, family tie helps, but it's hardly a prerequisite: most journalists come from non journalist families -- me, for instance.
>
> Isn't the proportion of writers who are women and/or racial minorities
> lower in print journalism (including liberal or left journalism) than in
> IATSE?
well, our IATSE correspondent didn't give figures for race. He said 5% of union electricians were women. Print journalism is way ahead of that-- I think around 40%, but it's not evenly spread around the various subspecialties and women are congregated in lower ranks, paid less -- the usual.
I'm always comparing male and female bylines in the press. My impression is progressive publications do worse than the mainstream. Women write a much higher percentage of the New York Times than of The Nation, and are spread more evenly throughout the paper (often Pat Williams or I are the only female bylines in an issue of the Nation). the Times has really changed from say twenty years ago -- they have LOTS of female stars now. The worst are the stuffy intellectual mags like Atlantic, harpers and New York Review of books. I don't think the percent of female bylines has budged at those places since they were founded.
Katha