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Jessica Bennett (journalist)

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Jessica Bennett
Bennett in 2017
Born
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
EducationBoston University (BS)
OccupationJournalist
EmployerThe New York Times
AwardsNew York Press Club
Newswomen's Club of New York
GLAAD Media Award
International Center for Photography
Websitejessicabennett.com

Jessica Bennett is an American journalist and author who writes on gender issues, politics and culture. She was the first gender editor[1] of The New York Times and a former staff writer at Newsweek and columnist at Time.[2]

She is the author of Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace (HarperCollins, 2016)[3] and This Is 18: Girls Lives Through Girls' Eyes (Abrams, 2019).[4] She is an adjunct professor at the Arthur L. Carter Graduate School of Journalism at New York University.

Personal background

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Bennett grew up in Seattle, Washington, where she attended Garfield High School. She received a B.S. in journalism from Boston University, where she worked as a student reporter covering crime at The Boston Globe.

Career

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Bennett moved to New York City to become a research assistant to the Village Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, longtime chronicler of corrupt city politics and politicians, including Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump.[5]

At Newsweek and Time

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She went on to become a staff writer at Newsweek, where she spent six years. She won a New York Press Club award for her story on the Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy about a family's struggle to remove their daughter's gruesome death photos from the internet.[6] She also wrote on LGBTQ issues, earning a GLAAD Award. In 2010, she and two colleagues wrote a cover story titled "Are We There Yet?"[7] about the state of feminist progress for women journalists. The article appeared on the 40th anniversary of a landmark lawsuit against Newsweek,[8] in which 46 female staffers had sued the company for gender discrimination in the first lawsuit of its kind, paving the way for women journalists. That story became a book, The Good Girls Revolt, by Lynn Povich[9] and an Amazon TV series of the same name.[10]

Bennett left Newsweek after it merged with The Daily Beast to become the executive editor of Tumblr[11] and later worked briefly as an editor at Sheryl Sandberg's nonprofit foundation, Lean In,[12] where she created the "Lean In Collection with Getty Images", a photo initiative to change the depiction of women and LGBTQ families in stock photography.[13] She later became a columnist for Time.[14]

At New York Times

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For The New York Times, Bennett has been a writer and columnist[15] for the Style section and a contributing editor for the News and Opinion sections. In 2017, she was appointed the newspaper's first gender editor.[16]

In addition to her reporting, Bennett uses gender as a lens for buzzy projects that explore larger social issues. She launched the Times Overlooked obituaries project[17] and published the perspectives of young women around the world through "This is 18",[18] a photography project that became an international exhibit.

In the aftermath of #MeToo, she explored how college students were navigating Sexual consent on campus sexual consent on campus, and, in the pandemic, documented the plight of working mothers, for which she created a Primal Scream phone line. Bennett headlined The Times's women's conference, The New Rules Summit,[19] in 2019, and guided the newspaper's coverage of the centennial of the 19th amendment.[20]

Subjects

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Bennett has written extensively on the #MeToo movement,[21] including investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against the playwright Israel Horovitz,[22] and reporting from the civil rape and defamation trial brought by E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump.[23]

She also reports on cultural trends. Among them: An attempt by Playboy to "rebrand" for millennials[24] (and a similar effort by the Miss America pageant[25]); a class at Smith college, led by the scholar Loretta Ross, to teach students to "call in" instead of calling each other out;[26] columns on TikTok trauma; going to see the Barbie movie with the feminist scholar Susan Faludi,[27] and her quest to find "fun" in a time of darkness [28]

Bennett has profiled celebrities and public figures including Pamela Anderson,[29] Amanda Knox,[30] Monica Lewinsky,[31][32] E. Jean Carroll,[33] Jennifer Aniston[34] and Katie Hill.[35] She once wrote a viral piece about her Resting Bitch Face.[36]

Books and television

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In 2016, Bennett published Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace,[37] which was called "engaging, practical and hilarious" by Sheryl Sandberg[3] and "a classic f--k you feminist battle guide" by Ilana Glazer.[3]

She was editor of This Is 18: Girls Lives Through Girls' Eyes (Abrams, 2019), an expansion of the New York Times project of the same name.[4]

In 2023, Bennett was the inspiration for a "feminist journalist" named "Jess Bennett" who appeared in season 3 episode 8 of The Morning Show. In the episode, Alex (Jennifer Aniston) lands the interview with the fictional Jess Bennett, who was the first person to predict the overturn of Roe v. Wade on her website. While discussing the Supreme Court, Jess calls Alex out on her potential biases, asking if she can actually speak truth to power on certain issues when she's sleeping with said power.[38]

Awards and honors

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Bennett has been honored by the Newswomen's Club of New York,[39] GLAAD,[40] the New York Press Club[41] and the International Center of Photography.[42]

References

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  1. ^ Bennett, Jessica (December 13, 2017). "Jessica Bennett, Our New Gender Editor, Answers Your Questions". The New York Times. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  2. ^ "How to Stop a 'Manterrupter' Like Donald Trump". Time. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c Bennett, Jessica. "Feminist Fight Club - Jessica Bennett - Hardcover". HarperCollins US. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  4. ^ a b Bennett, Jessica (November 12, 2019). A stunning celebration of girlhood around the world, from the New York Times. Abrams Books. ISBN 9781419741234. Retrieved October 31, 2023.
  5. ^ Pérez-peña, Richard (February 25, 2011). "For Wayne Barrett, the Digging for Dirt Hasn't Stopped". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  6. ^ Bennett, Jessica (April 24, 2009). "One Family's Fight Against Grisly Web Photos". Newsweek.
  7. ^ "Young Women, Newsweek, and Sexism". Newsweek. March 18, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  8. ^ "40 Years of Sexism at Newsweek?". ABC News. March 24, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  9. ^ Liesl Schillinger (September 15, 2012). "Throwing Stones at Glass Ceilings". The New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  10. ^ Watch Good Girls Revolt Season 1 Episode - Amazon Video, retrieved September 26, 2016
  11. ^ Brian Stelter (February 2, 2012). "Blogging Site Tumblr Makes Itself the News". The New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  12. ^ Suzanna Bobadilla (June 28, 2013). "Meet Jessica Bennett, Feminist Powerhouse and Editor of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In". Mic. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  13. ^ "Q&A: The Curator of Lean In's Feminist Stock Photos". February 10, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
  14. ^ "Jessica Bennett". Time. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  15. ^ "Command Z". The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  16. ^ "Meet The New York Times's First Gender Editor". Teen Vogue. October 10, 2017. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  17. ^ Padnani, Amisha; Bennett, Jessica (March 8, 2018). "Remarkable People We Overlooked in Our Obituaries". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
  18. ^ Bennett, Jessica; Strzemien, Anya (October 11, 2018). "This is 18 Around the World — Through Girls' Eyes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
  19. ^ "The New Rules Summit: Women, Leadership and a Playbook for Change". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 19, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  20. ^ "Suffrage at 100". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  21. ^ Bennett, Jessica (November 5, 2017). "The Click Moment: How the Weinstein Scandal Unleashed a Tsunami". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  22. ^ Bennett, Jessica (November 30, 2017). "Nine Women Accuse the Playwright Israel Horovitz of Misconduct". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  23. ^ Bennett, Jessica (May 1, 2023). "Why Didn't She Scream? and Other Questions Not to Ask a Rape Accuser". The New York Times. Retrieved May 1, 2023.
  24. ^ Bennett, Jessica (August 2, 2019). "Can the Millennials Save Playboy?". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  25. ^ Bennett, Jessica; Simon, Sara (September 10, 2018). "Here's What You Didn't See on Miss America". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  26. ^ Bennett, Jessica (November 19, 2020). "What aid Instead of Calling Peiple Out, We Called Them In". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2023.
  27. ^ Bennett, Jessica (July 25, 2023). "I Saw 'Barbie' With Susan Faludi, and She Has a Theory About It". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2023.
  28. ^ Bennett, Jessica (August 20, 2022). "What Is Fun? Can I Have It? Will We Ever Have It Again". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2023.
  29. ^ Bennett, Jessica (January 13, 2023). "Pamela Anderson Doesn't Need Your Redemption. She's Just Fine". The New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2023.
  30. ^ Bennett, Jessica (October 2, 2021). "Amanda Knox Was Exonerated. That Doesn't Mean She's Free". The New York Times. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  31. ^ Bennett, Jessica (March 19, 2015). "Monica Lewinsky Is Back, but This Time It's on Her Terms". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
  32. ^ Bennett, Jessica (September 1, 2021). "Monica Lewinsky is Reluctantly Revisiting 'That Woman'". The New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2023.
  33. ^ Bennett, Jessica (June 27, 2019). "Why E. Jean Carroll, the Anti-Victim, Spoke Up About Trump". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  34. ^ Bennett, Jessica (September 10, 2019). "It's a New Morning for Jennifer Aniston". The New York Times.
  35. ^ Bennett, Jessica (August 8, 2020). "The Nudes Aren't Going Away. Katie Hill's OK With That". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  36. ^ Bennett, Jessica (August 1, 2015). "I'm Not Mad. That's Just My RBF". The New York Times.
  37. ^ Bennett, Jessica (September 13, 2016). Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace. Harper Wave. ISBN 9780062642363.
  38. ^ "The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 8 Recap". Screen Rant. October 22, 2019. Retrieved October 28, 2023.
  39. ^ Alex Alvarez (November 5, 2010). "The 2011 Front Page Awards". FishBowlNY, AdWeek.
  40. ^ "Pictures and Winners From the 20th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in NYC" (Press release). GLAAD. March 30, 2009.
  41. ^ "The New York Press Club Journalism Awards: 2011 Winners". New York Press Club. Archived from the original on July 9, 2015.
  42. ^ "2015 Infinity Award: Trustee". International Center of Photography. May 16, 2016. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
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