Closed Binders
August 4, 2015 7:03 PM   Subscribe

Yesterday, journalist Melody Kramer used her column on the website of the Poynter Institute to publish "a list of every hidden journalism-related social media group I could find”. Reaction to her column has been decidedly mixed.

Kramer’s stated goal was to increase transparency and access: “I’m a big fan of getting new voices into journalism and keeping them there. One of the ways to help level the existing playing field is to make sure everyone knows about the groups that already exist. Many of these groups are not well-advertised and are hard to find, particularly if you’re a freelancer or new to the field. So I decided to round up all the ones I know about in one place.” Some people have praised Kramer for spreading the word about resources that might not be widely known, especially by younger journalists, people of color, and people who do not live in big cities. Others have criticized Kramer for violating much-needed safe spaces for under-represented journalists.

Among the spaces that Kramer discussed was the Facebook group Binders Full of Women Writers, which was founded in 2014 to promote mutual support and career development for women and nonbinary journalists. The group has been written about elsewhere and is affiliated with annual conferences in New York and Los Angeles that are open to the public, but the Facebook groups’ terms forbid members from discussing it publicly. After refusing a request to remove the group from her list, Kramer announced she was expelled from Binders Full of Women Writers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious (62 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm not a journalist, haven't discussed this with any journalists, and just saw some stuff about it on Twitter, so I hope I haven't got the whole thing terribly wrong! I just thought it raised some interesting questions about closed spaces as safe spaces vs. closed spaces as unintentional gatekeepers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:05 PM on August 4, 2015


Wow, the whole set of "binders full of women" have either gone completely offline or have gone invisible on FB. They are no more. WTF is that all about?
posted by dejah420 at 7:13 PM on August 4, 2015


Thanks for sharing this, ArbitraryAndCapricious; it's a great post. Melody has definitely been taking a very vocal, public, open approach to her work in recent months, with very good intentions, and this is yet another example.

As someone who researches online harassment, including the harassment of journalists, I can understand the concern of people who prefer some peer support conversations by underrepresented groups to stay under the radar. The power of marginalized groups to choose for themselves when to be visible and when to avoid the risks of visibility is an important one to maintain.
posted by honest knave at 7:14 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I think the Binders groups have only ever been visible by members. Kramer didn't realize that when she made her list, because she was a member and so could see them, but some people mention it in the comments.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:15 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


No ilxor.com? Ok music journos are safe.
posted by mctsonic at 7:18 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Metafilter's Own.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 7:24 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anyone who's ever been through an A-list fight on the internet could have told the Binders women that this was going to happen. Even well-intentioned secret (or even not-so-secret) lists go bad, or at least look bad when they become public. And they especially look bad when their reaction to going public is to go all j'accuse and pissy about how their secret club was supposed to be secret, and you took the pinky swear, and how dare you reveal things you didn't actually reveal, and so on.

And honestly, if your support group has to remain secret in order to work, you really do need to turn the searchlight on yourselves and wonder what it is you value, because it's certainly not inclusivity of everyone who might actually want or need that support.
posted by fedward at 7:26 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


And honestly, if your support group has to remain secret in order to work, you really do need to turn the searchlight on yourselves and wonder what it is you value, because it's certainly not inclusivity of everyone who might actually want or need that support.

Or maybe just maybe it needs to remain secret in order to work so that women with public profiles can have a space where they can speak without fear?

nah that couldn't be it
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:29 PM on August 4, 2015 [35 favorites]


Even well-intentioned secret (or even not-so-secret) lists go bad,

Clearly they should have operated in cells.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:30 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well, when the secret group requests to be removed from your public list, of course they'll kick you out.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:31 PM on August 4, 2015


Sometimes groups are secret for valid reasons. Back when I was in journalism, we had our house secrets and methods. This is basically ruining a web of trust. It's an immature move from somebody native enough to believe that no exposure is too broad to cause harm.
posted by boo_radley at 7:31 PM on August 4, 2015 [10 favorites]


I belong to a couple of journalism-related online communities. We are somewhat careful about who we add to certain lists because there are indeed government spies out there and our writers are routinely imprisoned for reporting. And there are governments that also kill journalists. 14 journalists have been killed in Veracruz, Mexico, alone, so far this year. So it does make sense to be somewhat cautious about privacy.
posted by Nevin at 7:35 PM on August 4, 2015 [21 favorites]


Is there an archive of the facebook group?
posted by destro at 7:35 PM on August 4, 2015


you really do need to turn the searchlight on yourselves and wonder what it is you value, because it's certainly not inclusivity of everyone who might actually want or need that support.

There are outreach tools and methods groups can and do use to broaden participation besides Facebook search. Thank goodness.
posted by Miko at 7:36 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Is this the return of JournoList?

I've often wondered if Ezra Klein didn't simply move it somewhere else instead of outright shutting it down.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:37 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Good discussion in the comments
posted by Nevin at 7:38 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Broad-based groups are never secure. I suppose there's a selection effect here, in that we don't hear about the secure ones, but this is the equivalent of a private club, not a secret channel. The bad guys undoubtedly had access a long time ago; the only thing this structure protects is privilege.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:40 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you're going to genericize down to "bad guys" your objection is meaningless.
posted by boo_radley at 7:42 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


I actually think she might have a valid point about the Binders Full of Women Writers group. It's apparently huge: the Vogue article mentions 20,000 members, and that was right after the thing got started. I think it would be naive to think that anything on a group that big was really private anyway. And I think there's a huge danger of geographical and class bias. The Binders group has conferences in New York and LA. They offer some scholarships, but you still have to get there and find a place to stay. If you're a newbie journalist who lives near New York or LA, you might be able to get one of those scholarships and go, even if you don't have a lot of money. But if you're in Nebraska or Ohio? That's not going to happen unless you are unusually well-funded and/or well-connected. I work with journalism students, and they're pretty shut out of the kind of networks that people need to make a go of it. They can't go to New York and get an internship, so they don't meet the people who hook them up with things like the Binders Full of Women Writers group, where young writers get leads for jobs and things like that. I think they should at least know that stuff exists so they can try to get access.

I think there's a lot less reason to publicize smaller, more-specific groups, though.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:43 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


I just wanted to join the Binders group. Which is to say, once it had been in Vogue, I didn't really think they were still trying to keep it a secret, ya know? After 20k members, I just thought it might be an interesting group.
posted by dejah420 at 7:45 PM on August 4, 2015


If you're going to genericize down to "bad guys" your objection is meaningless.

"Bad guys" is shorthand for whoever you're trying to exclude - fascists, liberals, men, women, the secret police, whatever.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:46 PM on August 4, 2015


Actually, the only group I am looking for would be for "strategies for content marketing & and audience engagement in journalism." Does such a group exist? It's almost impossible to find anyone else doing it.
posted by Nevin at 7:47 PM on August 4, 2015


There are outreach tools and methods groups can and do use to broaden participation besides Facebook search. Thank goodness.

Yes, except this doesn't solve the problem of inclusivity of people who are truly new. You already have to be a member of the club for the outreach to know you exist (regardless of whether it's Facebook search or something else). If you didn't go to the right school or get the right internship or have the right friend, or whatever, the existence of this huge support network will be completely unknown to you. It's insular and clubby by design.
posted by fedward at 7:49 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I was a journalist. Well, a sportswriter. The concept of a secret email list for sportswriters is alien to me. I didn't want to talk to other sportswriters. We're not swapping inside information -- the person next to you in the press box was the Enemy. So what the fuck else would we talk about? The free hot dogs?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:01 PM on August 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


You already have to be a member of the club for the outreach to know you exist

This doesn't make any sense to me. Members of the club can do outreach to people who don't know they exist.

It's insular and clubby by design.

Perhaps, so let's entertain this. Professions have networks. Access to professional networks is important for professional advancement; we can all agree on that. And as you move up in the profession, you want to get access to better and better networks - to get in touch with people who are more accomplished, more serious, more knowledgeable, and better connected, who can help you answer questions and face challenges that are far beyond those you had when starting out. So, what better means is often more exclusive - especially as you get into more advanced professional echelons.

What to do about this? I think the presumption that all networks are about broad inclusivity, or should be about broad inclusivity, is wrong. Some networks are about a certain kind of inclusion - boosting one another up as collegial members of the group, perhaps founded on an identity category or a genre of work. Other networks are purposefully about targeted membership and involve a sifting of the potential candidates related to some sort of standard or specialization or identity. Some are in between: boosting up one category of people partially by excluding another (in some of these cases, the majority/dominant class - so, no men in Binders). I'm not sure we can say exclusivity/inclusivity is always a central value of a professional network. A professional network is meant to serve its members, and sometimes it can do this best by being broadly inclusive - but sometimes that waters down its quality and wastes everyone's time, so other times they work best by leaning more to the exclusive. I don't think we can say a network is "bad" just because it's exclusive - to be fair, we'd have to know whom it chooses to exclude and why.

If you didn't go to the right school or get the right internship or have the right friend, or whatever

Sure, but that's kind of a tautology of career progress - not only with Facebook groups, but with hearing about job openings, landing interviews, developing contacts - I mean, access to resources is 90% of success. Your observation is true, but that is why you have to work everything you've got. It's not a reason people shouldn't use networks to try to assist one another.
posted by Miko at 8:02 PM on August 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


Sometimes even the best intentioned secret groups become in-groups and start behaving in unhealthy or socially hostile ways, as well as throwing up unfair barriers to access to opportunity. That is definitely a true thing. But is that relevant here? The same things that make secret groups powerful can make them dangerous, but secret groups of various kinds have always had a place in public life and legitimate--even vitally important--roles to play in society at different times. I don't see how in practice you could ever stop them from forming and being used/abused, so the question then becomes more about the specific kind of role the secret group is playing and whether or not it's doing more active good or harm in the world, which is a very tricky sort of ethical question. So I find the whole subject pretty thorny. I've definitely seen less professionally-oriented secret groups play damaging roles in some individual people's lives (a long story about a relative of mine could go here, but I'll skip it if you'll take that claim on faith). But at a certain point, I think we all have to accept secret groups have always existed and always will. I sometimes wonder if there might not be something fundamentally different about secret online groups due to techical characteristics of the medium itself and also due to the fact online social relations and identities tend to function differently from real world ones in important and evident ways (not that there isn't overlap, too). The basic questions here are important ones to think about. Not sure I'm informed enough to have a strong opinion, but it seems healthy these kinds of discussions are being had.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:02 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Is there a distinction to be made between closed and secret? The groups could still be exclusive without being secret, right? They could have a clear application process that was open to everyone, not just the people who knew the right people.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:05 PM on August 4, 2015


The groups could still be exclusive without being secret, right?

In some cases, the main difference is in dealing with troll-y crap. And you'd be amazed the lengths jerks will go to to fuck with a group. Being under the radar helps keep that at bay.
posted by Miko at 8:07 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Members of the club can do outreach to people who don't know they exist.

How do the members of the club identify potential new members? It's not like there's a secret journalism club pledge week that's documented in j-school orientation, where you get to apply for all the secret clubs to evaluate you. Say somebody goes to Podunk U and then gets a job writing for the Podunk Post after graduation. How would the club find her? Outreach only works in known networks, and the presumption that the network is aware of all the potential members is easily disproven. And that's to say nothing of people who didn't go to j-school at all but somehow fell into journalism jobs. Those people wouldn't have ever seen the flyer on the j-school message board, because they didn't go to j-school at all.

You can talk about outreach, and you can talk about support, whatever, but when the Ada Initiative shuts down because one executive search resulted in failure, and the board decides to give up because they don't think they can do better than they already did — in other words, when networking the known contact list has failed and a vital organization ceases to exist as a result — then I think a belief that the network will surface all the talent is naïve at best, self-defeating at worst.

I should probably not comment on this any more because it really hits a sore spot. Every job I've gotten since I moved to DC 17 years ago has come through networking, and I knew people in town before I arrived here. I haven't gotten a single job through old fashioned shoe leather and resumes, and it's not for lack of trying. How many jobs was I not even considered for because nobody in the office knew me? How would I have broken into the network here if I'd just been a literal new guy on the street?
posted by fedward at 8:14 PM on August 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


It's gotten to be more about who you know in just about every economic sector, I think, Fedward. It worries me, too. It's not a good approach for promoting social mobility, and America was already slipping in that department before networking oriented models started dominating HR practices.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:24 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


How do the members of the club identify potential new members?'

Through their existing friend networks, through outreach to journalists' associations at colleges and in local cities, to interconnections with other associations, through direct invites to people they've targeted.

How would the club find her?

Er...her byline, for starters.

But most college journalists, even at Podunk, also belong to groups like the College Media Association and the Associated Collegiate Press and its many state, city, and university affiliate groups and the hundreds of other journalism groups that exist out there and run Facebook pages. People meet and network on these pages and through these organizations (I mean, this is partly why aspiring journalists work on college papers - to build a network) and, if there's a secret group that would be a good fit, invitations can migrate that way, too.

How would I have broken into the network here if I'd just been a literal new guy on the street?

It's a problem in every profession. But (and I mean this in a way nonspecific to you) that's where you put the shoe leather - go to meetups, go to chamber events, go to happy hours, volunteer for conferences and symposia, etc. Most jobs come through networking; there are stats on it that I can't be arsed to Google right now. Network building is a vital skill in the professions. It's precisely because of that that these groups form and grow and become useful to people. But the more dilute they get, the less useful they are.
posted by Miko at 8:25 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's gotten to be more about who you know in just about every economic sector

I don't think this was different in the past, as it accounts in part for the difficulty women and minorities had in entering professional life - but economic expansion may have concealed its prevalence.
posted by Miko at 8:29 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's absolutely always been about who you knew, which is part of why journalism has such a diversity problem at the moment. It used to be that you got a job by knowing someone from your prep school, your Ivy League college, or your country club. Now you get a job because someone you know from your prep school, Ivy League college, or country club gave you a reference for the exclusive Facebook group where the job is advertised. Progress!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:33 PM on August 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


I think entry level jobs in a lot of sectors used to be more open to all qualified comers. My first couple of jobs were walk in cold off the street and apply type opportunities, but you rarely see any of those outside the public sector anymore above minimum wage. At least, that's my gut feel; no evidence to cite for that impression.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:52 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm a member at Binders. The logic in the post the moderators made about this issue was hilarious. That it's about privacy and not having to worry about your friends seeing your posts? Sorry, that became an issue when the group passed 30,000 members. I'd estimate pretty much every female writer I know is in that group.

That said, Facebook groups clearly aren't designed for that many members. That particular group stopped being useful around 10,000, when it started getting inundated with spam. The "sub binders," which are smaller, are a bit more useful, but even some of those have gotten bad with people spamming their kickstarters, random blog posts, etc. It's a problem Reddit has suffered from as well and they haven't created moderation tools that would help mods manage the deluge of users and related problems.

Even joining a "sub binder" can take months. Because the way they do it now is each one has a separate thread in the main binder and you post your email address there and then the moderator of the sub binder has to manually add you. The Facebook Group system wasn't built for this and Facebook hasn't made much effort to improve it from what I've gathered.
posted by melissam at 9:18 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's gotten to be more about who you know in just about every economic sector, I think, Fedward. It worries me, too. It's not a good approach for promoting social mobility, and America was already slipping in that department before networking oriented models started dominating HR practices.

It's all about picking up the phone and meeting people. I came back to Canada in my early thirties after spending 10 years abroad. I was a teacher, and there were no teaching jobs. So I picked up the phone and got a job in government communications at a time when government wasn't supposed to be hiring.

So in my experience, networking is all about facilitating social mobility. Eventually I volunteered at an immigrant services non-profit. Thanks to another job I networked myself into, I knew many local CEO's and HR managers (and this was within 3 years of returning to Canada with virtually no local contacts in a fairly small job market).

I was able to help immigrants quickly connect with good jobs. When they were referred to me it was networking. When I figured out who could use their skills, that was networking too. It all worked because people just picked up the phone.

Networking is just about making connections, that's all. It's a much better strategy for getting the job you want compared to responding to a job ad.
posted by Nevin at 9:27 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


In the midst of finding jobs now, and my career coach at university told me that I'd have already lost the job if I were responding to a job-ad. Seems like all the serious interviews happen even before an advert has been posted.

That said, I'm not sure how a 30,000-member-strong group can help in this regard; how do people form those human connections between strangers over and above Facebook's or cyberspace's limitations?
posted by the cydonian at 9:56 PM on August 4, 2015


Melody Kramer broke the Binders rules, but I think her list was much better-intentioned and more honest than the other pieces on the group I've read, especially that shitty Jon Chait piece on P.C. that came out earlier this year, which also brought a lot of unwanted publicity and misrepresented the group dynamics (another Binders member here, fwiw).
posted by thetortoise at 10:49 PM on August 4, 2015


That said, I'm not sure how a 30,000-member-strong group can help in this regard; how do people form those human connections between strangers over and above Facebook's or cyberspace's limitations?

That's actually something that Facebook is good at: helping you find friends in common. I expect that if you have a common profession there will typically be no more than one or two degrees of separation between you and the contact you're trying to make.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:50 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


This accusation in the comments seemed important:

By linking the master subgroup doc you have publicly shared dozens of people's personal email addresses. *That* is indefensible. In the name of helping other women writers, these women entrusted their contact info to a group who had collectively sworn secrecy about its existence. Breaking the trust of Binders is one thing; breaking it in a way that specifically exposes information about its members is another.

Can any of the Binders folks here confirm that? I don't see a reply from Melody on that point, and wonder if she feels that part might have been a mistake.
posted by mediareport at 2:55 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


The linked sub-binders doc does have many personal e-mail addresses in it, but I only see it when I am logged into Facebook. It isn't visible to non-members, as far as I can tell.
posted by thetortoise at 3:20 AM on August 5, 2015


Sure, but that's kind of a tautology of career progress - not only with Facebook groups, but with hearing about job openings, landing interviews, developing contacts - I mean, access to resources is 90% of success.

US employers don't have equal opportunities policies?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:21 AM on August 5, 2015


Or maybe just maybe it needs to remain secret in order to work so that women with public profiles can have a space where they can speak without fear?

The irony of any serious journalist using that argument to avoid being written about, when they would destroy any subject who tried to use it (or a variant) with them, is phenomenal.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:00 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


"Speak without fear" is also known as "having a trusted confidant to whom one can reveal one's emotions", not "writing a wall of text on FB to a large group of people, most of whom I don't know, and thus cannot, by definition, trust".

Clubby, snobby backlash is all this is.
posted by gsh at 6:07 AM on August 5, 2015


melissam: " I'd estimate pretty much every female writer I know is in that group. "

Whereas, I'm connected to dozens of published female writers (fiction/science/tech), and not a single one of them is in the Binders group, including myself. I sent a chat around yesterday, and none of us has ever been approached, and between all of us, we've got hundreds of books and thousands of articles, but there's never been any "outreach" towards us. Perhaps Binders doesn't want older women? Perhaps Binders doesn't want women who've worked as writers for longer than some members have been alive? Perhaps we don't have any perspective we can share. I dunno. None of us know.

For people like me, and a few other writers that work primarily under pen names, nobody would know to do "outreach" to my facebook name, because why would they? I don't publish under it, and it's locked down so private that I'm not sure it's visible if you're not already a friend. Lots of female writers don't have forward facing FB pages with their real names, because GamerGate may have been the most visible of the vitriol thrown at female writers, but it certainly wasn't the first or even the most dangerous. So, how, exactly, are they going to do "outreach"?

As a counterpoint, I've been a member of Systers since listserve was a thing...I'd venture a guess around 1986-87. Systers has never had a strong "one of us, one of us" mentality, despite being a focused female group. In the 30 years it's been around, we've never had to hide from potential members.
posted by dejah420 at 6:18 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's actually something that Facebook is good at: helping you find friends in common. I expect that if you have a common profession there will typically be no more than one or two degrees of separation between you and the contact you're trying to make.

I see where you're coming from, but surely, that's significantly better on LinkedIn? On LinkedIn, you can look people up on the basis of role and company, and if you're two-degrees separated (you know someone who knows this person), you can ask your common contact to introduce you to the person. Basically, FB is great to keep in touch with "weak-ties" - your friend from school who now lives two time-zones away etc - but to actively seek new professional contacts, LinkedIn perhaps may be better.

Then again, I don't know if you can have *secret* LinkedIn groups.
posted by the cydonian at 6:19 AM on August 5, 2015


The linked sub-binders doc does have many personal e-mail addresses in it, but I only see it when I am logged into Facebook. It isn't visible to non-members, as far as I can tell.

If Kramer linked a document with many personal email addresses that would be visible to anyone with a Facebook account (as I understand your comment), then that certainly seems like a pretty gross violation of privacy, and more than enough cause for the group to drop her. I'm curious to see if Kramer has a response to that.
posted by mediareport at 6:19 AM on August 5, 2015


US employers don't have equal opportunities policies?

Of course they do, but that doesn't negate the need to network. EEO has specific powers against discrimination, but it doesn't have the power to determine the applicant pool. Affirmative action statutes have attempted to impact the applicant pool. Who hears about a job is one thing; who gets it, entirely another.
posted by Miko at 6:20 AM on August 5, 2015


mediareport: "The linked sub-binders doc does have many personal e-mail addresses in it, but I only see it when I am logged into Facebook. It isn't visible to non-members, as far as I can tell.

If Kramer linked a document with many personal email addresses that would be visible to anyone with a Facebook account (as I understand your comment), then that certainly seems like a pretty gross violation of privacy, and more than enough cause for the group to drop her. I'm curious to see if Kramer has a response to that.
"

That is not what she did. It's not visible to anyone who is not ALREADY a Binder's member.
posted by dejah420 at 6:24 AM on August 5, 2015


ON reflection, there's also a difference between entry-level jobs and advanced jobs and gigs, especially in media and related fields, where you are more likely to be hired on the basis of who you are, your specialty, and how large and significant your contact base is. It's much different from hiring people with similar tech certifications for similar-level management positions, where who you're connected to is not an essential part of doing the job. People hired to produce content are hired in part for their ability to network - that's part of the job, so it's part of the applicant profiling process, too.

Basically, FB is great to keep in touch with "weak-ties"

Speaking as someone who uses LinkedIn a lot, the tools for casual chatter aren't as good. It's more formal and higher-stakes. Once you're in a dedicated group on FB, you're no longer in weak-tie land. For instance, I run a regional network for food activists, and even though I didn't know most of those people when starting out, it is now a very strong network on which I can depend when planning events, doing travel, executing campaigns. Communicating on Facebook is easier, faster, and has a lower barrier. It's a good place to be made aware of many opportunities rapidly, to discuss emerging trends, and also just to cheer each other on.
posted by Miko at 6:26 AM on August 5, 2015


So, to reiterate: She is being decried for having linked to and mentioned the existence of a non-secret group with a membership in the tens of thousands that has been written about in Vogue, has a hashtag on twitter, and hosts national conferences.

Just so we're on the same page here.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:54 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well, I think that Binders isn't really the only or main issue. Their demands for secrecy seem a little ridiculous and potentially exclusionary, but I think the serious complaints come from people like Gene Demby, who talks a lot about how few black men there are working at NPR and how difficult and lonely it sometimes can be to be the only one in the room. I think you could make a much better case that there's a need for closed spaces where people who are the only ones can come together to process the challenges they face, and it may be that publicizing those spaces threatens them.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:15 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Their demands for secrecy seem a little ridiculous and potentially exclusionary

But I think their motivations are exactly like Gene Demby's [would be if he belonged to a safe space like the one you propose]. Of course, we can't see the entire discussion they are having here, but this is essentially the core issue behind not wanting to be advertised.

Women are still shockingly underrepresented as newsroom editors and certainly as publishers.
posted by Miko at 7:43 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't think that a group with 30,000+ members is ever a safe space. I don't think there's any way ever to be sure that all 30,000+ people are on the same page as you. I think it's a given that some of the 30,000 people are showing the group to their friends, partners, etc.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:54 AM on August 5, 2015


I don't think that a group with 30,000+ members is ever a safe space.

Well, it's spun off to dozens (hundreds?) of sub-binders or subgroups which are smaller and more targeted. It's kind of like a giant conference which spins off sessions and tighter groups and personal interactions and small-group projects. In the end, I'd care less about whether it's truly safe, as in no one knows it even exists, than about whether it's spammed and trolled, which is the heart of the objection. And even though it's large, thanks to moderation and gatekeeping and below-the-rader operation, it's "safe" in that you can talk openly about institutional sexism in the industry - even about specifics - without being attacked, challenged, and trolled during the discussion - and that's what's needed.
posted by Miko at 8:14 AM on August 5, 2015


I would draw attention to djripley's comment on the story, which has been the top comment since yesterday:
While it is important to highlight resources so that people, especially people who challenge the status quo, are able to get access to them, it is also true that heightening visibility of people or groups of people, in a general way brings its own problems. Hypervisibility is a thing, especially for people who challenge the status quo. If you can't imagine why women (or any other marginalized group) might want to have a place that is not on the radar in which to discuss things, then you haven't thought very carefully about what is at stake when any marginalized person engages in public writing. The idea that women are being "petty" or "paranoid" for wanting to control the terms on which they are being made visible is a pretty old critique, not automatically a progressive one, and one that doesn't really take seriously the reasons why one needs a gendered group (or a group for any marginalized group) in the first place.

That said, if this was a piece discussing what reasons women writers might have for wanting to have a secret group, or even more specifically raising questions about why a particular group is secret and what might be lost (or is lost--- I don't know, for example, the racial breakdown of Binders--) by that decision, or a piece challenging that decision as hypocritical or racist, that would be another thing.

But it's kind of strange to discuss a group that says "this is a secret group" in its description and then publicly write about the group. Or to discuss groups as being "hidden" and then expose them without attention to whether they were hidden by choice. And it's a little strange as well, given the focus on power in the initial discussion, to pretend that you can imagine no good reason for hidden groups, and no possible negative consequences to making a group public that was secret (especially a group of women who chose to be secret).<>
posted by Miko at 8:16 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, I mean, Melody Kramer is a woman. I'm a woman. I don't think either of us are somehow ignorant of the realities facing women. I also don't think that gender is the only exclusion that matters, and I think there is evidence that hiring via personal networks tends to reinforce various forms of hierarchy and privilege. Djripley doesn't know what the racial breakdown of Binders is, and of course she couldn't talk about it if she did. But I think that it's really problematic to have a massive, well-organized, closed, secret networking organization that was founded by an elite, white New Yorker and spreads through word of mouth. I certainly hope that they make efforts to overcome the biases inherent in the format, but I have no way of knowing whether they do, because they're secret. And that's a problem. I think it's worth exposing that problem and discussing it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:34 AM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


I think it's kind of a tempest in a teapot. It's not the first networking group for women in journalism, and it won't be the last, whether or not it's secret.
posted by Miko at 8:39 AM on August 5, 2015


Being IT and a writer, it's a huge problem that a document like that containing email addresses was accessible by just the link anyway. And that's a problem created by the fact that Facebook's group documents are meh and they created a bunch of google docs with the security set to anyone being able to view/edit who has the link. When I've created docs in various binders I've used Facebook's native docs even though it is far more limited, just because it's going to be a lot more secure.

Perhaps Binders doesn't want older women?

I don't know, but I know the sub-binders I'm most involved with (food primarily) are moderated by older women and I've personally invited a lot of older women to the groups– but I met them all through "real life" events and we all live in a large city. It would be harder if you lived outside of that to meet someone already connected.

If I worked for Facebook and was charged to create a solution for this, I'd do a lot of things to the application starting with allowing groups to have public and private sections. And the public section could allow members to apply and there would be a proper queue to manage applicants. I'd also implement a better flagging system so users could assist with moderating out poor quality content ("donate to my kickstarter" and that kind of stuff). Facebook is one of the most used social networking systems, so the positive impact of this could be really high.

I doubt Facebook would ever do this, but it's perfectly possible with the available APIs to allow people to create Google Docs that would allow the group's members proper access.
posted by melissam at 8:46 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ms. Kramer followed up today: Why I Made A List Of Hidden Journalism Groups And What I Learned.
posted by eamondaly at 9:44 AM on August 5, 2015


I also posted a request for groups in several of the Facebook groups I listed and received several suggestions. No one asked to have their group removed from the list.

Based on this comment, Kramer wouldn't have delisted them even if they asked.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:49 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


From the follow-up link:

On Monday, I shared a list of every journalism group on social media that I could find

...that isn't quite right. The article was headed

A list of every hidden journalism-related social media group I could find

There are many, many journalism groups on social media that aren't closed or secret, and they didn't make the list, even though they may help with access just as much or more. It just doesn't smell great. It has the aura of being a statement more about openness and transparency than inclusivity and access.
posted by Miko at 10:35 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


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