Announcing the November News Book Club read: “There’s No Crying in Newsrooms”

The November News Book Club pick is “There’s No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned About What It Takes to Lead” by Kristin Gardy Gilger and Julia Wallace. 

This was our closest vote yet. “There’s No Crying in Newsrooms” won by one vote. (Thank you to everyone who answered my plea yesterday to vote to break the tie.) I’m still looking forward to reading “Couples Who Work” and “The Culture Map” on my own time though. Let me know if you’d like to discuss those separately, and we can set up a discussion. 

Our host for this discussion, Anita Zielina, the Director of News Innovation and Leadership at the CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, will lead our conversation. An experienced digital media executive, Anita is leading the creation of CUNY’s new executive program in news innovation and leadership. I first met Anita in her past role as Chief Product Officer at Switzerland’s Neue Zuercher Zeitung Media Group. 

We’ll meet on Zoom to discuss the book  Monday Nov. 25 at 1 p.m. EST. (It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving — you won’t want to do any work anyway that week, so take an hour out of your day to chat with us!)

 You can click here to add it to your Google calendar. As always, you can join the conversation on Slack as well or on Twitter with the hashtag #NewsBookClub. You can purchase a copy here or, of course, check your local library. 

There will be no shortage of things for us to discuss about  “There’s no Crying in the Newsroom.” The book documents how women have broken through leadership ranks in newsrooms over the past 40 years. The book’s authors are two Arizona State University journalism professors. They both have decades of journalism experience and each were top editors in newsrooms.

Gilger and Wallace interview more than 100 women in news including Arianna Huffington, Melissa Bell, Jill Abramson, and more. Here’s a review from the site Women 2.0:

“Based in the notoriously aggressive and traditionally masculine world of news and media, the authors Kristin Grady Gilger and Julia Wallace (both news veterans) ask the questions you’ve always wanted to know from the women at the top: ‘How did you get where you are?’ ‘What did you say to the creepy guys at work?’ ‘Do you think you made the right decision to (not) have kids?’ and ‘What can I do today to get ahead?’

Each book chapter concludes with advice to the reader. ‘Be your authentic self,’ ‘dress the part’ and ‘learn as much as you can’ may be cliche statements but don’t get stuck on them – this is one of the few leadership books in which each chapter becomes more compelling than the last. The authors weave the stories of dozens of women leaders into the broader history of gender and civil rights in America, and in how news and journalism are changing in the digital age.” 

I can’t wait to start reading “There’s No Crying in Newsrooms,” and I have no doubts that we’ll have an outstanding conversation on the book.