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I have never been to the page of the Facebook group run by my guests on this podcast.
I can’t get into the group.
And that’s a really good thing.
Sarah-Blake Morgan and Katie Eastman run MMJane, a Facebook group that provides a platform and community for its nearly 1,000 members.
The members are all women, and they are all solo video journalists.
Such a group is long overdue. A few weeks ago, I released the results of the MMJ Survey, in which nearly 100 MMJs gave their anonymous thoughts about how they view the job and business. I discovered a massive gender gap in the responses. Female MMJs consistently gave lower marks to statements about the solo life, most notably to the statement: “I see myself as an MMJ ten years from now.”
This is a huge problem for the future of our business.
Eastman and Morgan are my guests on Episode 51 of the Telling The Story podcast.
I spent 45 minutes chatting with the MMJane administrators about ways to better cater to female MMJs and give them a stronger voice in local TV newsrooms.
Only afterwards did I realize: they have already taken a giant step towards doing that.
The mere existence and ownership of MMJane is a massive victory for the one-woman band community — and, thus, our industry as a whole. Underrepresented groups advance more quickly when they develop a unified voice and receive positions of power. MMJane provides both.