Architects of the Change

I often call my journalism students “the architects of the change.” What I mean is that, as the whole industry transforms itself, it will most likely be up to those who are just entering the field to be in on the action of what the future of news will be. (If you think this is [...]

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Unhappiness in the Time of Cougar Town

In all this analyzing we’ve been doing of the Paradox of Declining Female Happiness study, and the subsequent spinning of it courtesy of Marcus Buckingham and Maureen Dowd, there’s one point we’ve been pretty quick to gloss over: age. Not for long. I promise not to whine. But it does seem worthy of being addressed, [...]

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There’s Nothing Wrong with Women: A Guest Post by Charlotta Kratz

Charlotta Kratz, a lecturer in the communication department at Santa Clara University, takes on Marcus Buckingham and the happiness gap and scores big. Maybe the study shows there’s nothing wrong with women whatsoever. Maybe it’s the culture. THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH WOMEN by Charlotta Kratz Marcus Buckingham has written three posts on Huffington Post recently, [...]

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Just Some Undecided Girl: A Guest Post by Katie Powers

Katie Powers, a recent college grad and former editor-in-chief of her college newspaper, encounters the cruel, cruel world outside the campus bubble, and not only lives to write about it, but discovers something about herself: maybe success is all about acceptance of what is, coupled with the realization that no matter what goes down in [...]

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Zeitgeist: Singing Our Song

The past couple weeks’ worth of posts have certainly resonated. And your comments continue to make us think–and to make us think that we are not alone. None of us are. Here’s some of what’s been going on: Are You Undecided, Too? had Samantha doing a little soul-searching: I have briefly read some of the [...]

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The Examined Life: Happiness Redefined.

Hold the hankies, girls. Here comes the heresy. To wit, maybe we’re actually a lot happier than Marcus Buckingham et al think we are. It’s not that anyone disputes the data. Clearly, the numbers are all there, and they show that quantitatively, women rate themselves lower on the happiness scale than they did back in [...]

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Eat Crazy Sexy Pray: Seeking is the New Black

There’s a movement afoot in Manhattan, according to NYT reporter Allen Salkin, in his recent piece “Seeing Yourself in Their Light”…and those feet doing the moving? They’re more likely to be bare than stiletto-clad. The article (which, not incidentally, appeared in the Style section) chronicles women in their late 20s to late 30s who’ve ditched [...]

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On Food, Feminism — and dreams of a Fourth Wave.

I say we leave it up to the kids. More below. Writing in The Nation last week, Katha Pollitt threw some love at Julie and Julia, the feel-good foodie movie about Julia Child and Julie Powell, the 20-something blogger who tried to channel Child by cooking her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” [...]

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Women’s Declining Happiness: The Paradox That Isn’t

A study by Wharton School’s Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” that I first wrote about in July got a lot of attention this week. First, from self-helpuru Marcus Buckingham on the Huffington Post, in a piece trumpeted as the beginning of a series, and which benefitted from some [...]

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The Grateful Dead…Tired

No doubt you can guess who are the most tired of all. But first, courtesy of a recent column by Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, an update on the current economy’s creepy underbelly. Underneath the myth of the “grateful workers” — the folk happy to have a job, any job — lie the legions of [...]

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