There's No Crying in Newsrooms Quotes

“The breakthrough we need is when we’re at a point where it’s socially unacceptable for a panel or conference or boardroom to be all men,” she said. “The breakthrough will come when no one finds it acceptable when only one or two women are in anything. We’re not anywhere close to a place where there is true assumed equality.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“After so many years, I was used to it. It was just another remark in a long, long list of offensive, obnoxious, ignorant, destructive things said to me and others by people with some power or sway. But the truth of the matter is this: It wasn’t OK. And it wasn’t OK for me to be OK with it. For me to put up with it. To laugh it off, to excuse it, to use it as a cocktail-party tale. It wasn’t OK for me. And it isn’t OK for my amazing nieces, for my brave colleagues, for the women coming up behind me.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“When a male colleague would say or do something she considered out of line, she would give him a pointed look, perhaps accompanied by an unamused laugh, and say something like, “Wait, did you really just say that?” The effect, Darbyshire said, was that “he knows you clocked him, but you’re not making a scene of it. But he also knows not to mess with you.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“The most successful people I know don’t think of their career as a ladder but rather a jungle gym,”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“McGinnis said her biggest challenge was her “never-ending quest to prove herself.” But what people remember most about her is how she managed to run a newsroom without ever appearing to order anyone around.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Think about finding your own group of “large ladies” with whom you can commiserate, compare notes, and network. It could be just the lifeline you need.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“the most successful women adapt their approach, depending on the circumstances and the people with whom they’re dealing. Sometimes they speak out—loudly—and sometimes, like Kim Guthrie, they “lead from the back of the boat.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Many of the women we interviewed find themselves carefully calibrating their behavior in the workplace. They worry about being too motherly, too brash, too opinionated, and not opinionated enough. They worry about being judged.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“They described feeling as if they had never truly arrived, questioned whether someone else could do the job better, and mentally steeled themselves to the possibility of getting tossed at any moment.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“She said women face far too many critics to add self-criticism to the mix. Her advice is to ignore the voice she calls “the obnoxious roommate living in our heads—that voice that feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“As women, she said, “we have to know ourselves and be true to ourselves and not try to adapt our natural instincts or strengths just because we think there’s some kind of mold we have to fit into.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“McFarlin said she has worked with women who think the only way to succeed is to act as masculine as possible. That made sense for earlier generations of women who blazed trails in newsrooms, she said, but she doesn’t think the “tough broad routine” works any longer, and she is certain it would never have worked for her.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Tough is like bossy. It’s a crap word. But you do have to act confident, convincing, competent. You have to be competent and convinced of your abilities.” She also believes in being polite, convivial, and collegial. “I do believe in trying to work together,” she said. “And only when it doesn’t work, then you have to knock some heads together.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Look, I think that women have been playing nice for an awfully long time, playing the game, climbing the ladder, being patient, accepting the tidbits and morsels that are handed out,” she said. “I think that we have to start kicking the door down.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Women, quite simply, are not supposed to excel at jobs and tasks that are designated as male in our culture. [If they do,] they are personally derogated, and they are disliked.”5”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“She not only mastered whatever issue was up for discussion but she also became a student of those around her. “You have to understand who could cause trouble for you, who your natural allies are, and how you can get what you need,” she said.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that you actually have to lead by being who you really are. And you can’t fake who you are. —Margaret Low”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Focus on what’s best for you and then throw yourself at it. And remember that the cause of women in newsrooms will take on urgency only if we make it happen—together.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that men thrive more easily in this environment. It was built with them in mind.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Challenging institutional habits means pushing back, willfully so.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Every woman I know in the news business has at least one story to tell about another woman who helped show her the way.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“The climate has never been better than it is today for competent and ambitious women in communications to move to top jobs formerly reserved for men. But you have to push and shove and maybe even scratch and claw a bit to get there. You should do it. And if you do, your readers will benefit most of all because you will vastly improve those areas of the newspaper product which are not designed primarily by men, but primarily for women.”2”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Most human resources departments have become much more sensitized to sexual misconduct in recent years, and that’s where you should go if yours is one of them. If not, tell your boss or your boss’s boss. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, tell another trusted supervisor. Document what happened and what you have done about it, even if it’s just writing a note, dating it, and putting it in a file.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“If a co-worker or source makes a comment, gets too close, or otherwise makes you feel uncomfortable, tell him he’s making you uncomfortable and he needs to stop.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Fifty-eight percent of women journalists and media professionals surveyed in 2018 by the International Women’s Media Foundation and TrollBusters said they had been threatened or harassed in person; 63 percent said the same had happened to them online.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Female empowerment was a safe topic; her own stories were not.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“There isn’t a woman at CBS who wouldn’t have a comparable story or more. Did we do anything about it? No. Who was I going to report it to? These guys were my bosses, and there was no system in place to do anything about it. I just assumed it was part of the territory.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“Almost all women leaders have stories about inappropriate sexual comments or actions—delivered by bosses, colleagues, sources, and, increasingly, internet trolls.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“McGinnis has a giant smile and an animated way about her that makes her fun to be around, but she can be absolutely fearless. Her boss, Andrew Heyward, said one of her strongest traits as a leader was that she was “fantastic at speaking truth to power.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead

“She never lorded it over others or used her position as a bludgeon. She was able to say and do very tough things because she deployed the right mix of humor, humility, and empathy.”
― Kristin Gilger, There's No Crying in Newsrooms: What Women Have Learned about What It Takes to Lead