Miami Herald Executive Editor Janet Chusmir (who began her career at the Herald as a women’s page reporter working for Marie Anderson) offered interesting insight into the role of women in journalism during this 1988 panel, Women in Newspaper Management. Janet made the transition from the women’s pages to management rather easily. Others, like Gloria Biggs of Florida Today, struggled. The DVD is available through C-SPAN.

Yesterday I interviewed Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten about his experiences with Miami Herald Executive Editor Janet Chusmir. (Gene was editor of the newspaper’s magazine, Tropic, in the 1980s.) He gave me some great insight and helped clarify more about her management style for a paper I am working on. He also provided a great story that I will share in a later post. Janet’s role as a “first” is worth studying and maybe more important is her unique career path. After earning her journalism degree, she stayed at home and raised two children. Then, when they were older, she joined the women’s pages of the Miami Herald. She worked…

Today I interviewed Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry about former women’s page editor and executive editor Janet Chusmir. He gave me some great perspective about her role as a manager and confirmed some of my original thesis about Janet’s role in the newsroom. He gave me a name to follow up with and a clip I plan to track down.

I recently received a CSPAN video about the lack of women in newspaper management – it features Janet Chusmir who went from women’s page reporter to executive editor of the Miami Herald. She makes excellent comments about the problem. I will post some of the video soon.