Part 2 of the Susan Whitall interview by Paula Yoo at Music Monday
Yes things have gotten better for female journalists, because of the changes in the broader culture. When I got out of college, in the mid-’70s mind you, scratching to get an ad writing job at an ad agency, the guy hiring actually said these words: ‘We start all our girls in the secretarial pool.’ I mean, right out of ‘Mad Men’!
Luckily I didn’t do that, but found Creem and caught on there. And fortunately, some of our male editors early on — Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs, particularly — were staunch feminists. Today there also isn’t the ever-present fear we had, of being mistaken for groupies. Today I think young women feel free enough, that it’s not a problem if they were taken for party girls. But we were very conscious of wanting to be seen as professionals, not girls looking for a good time. Thus when romantic liasons happened, it was pretty much kept on the down low (laugh)
(Link to part 1)
RockCritics.com 