The Chanticleer

Issue date: 4/8/10 Section: News

A woman held in high esteem in the field of journalism visited Jacksonville State University on the most mischievous day of the year - April Fool's Day.

JSU and the Girl Scouts of North-Central Alabama invited the public to hear guest lecturer Gail Collins. She is a best selling author, a columnist at The New York Times and she also co-teaches an opinion writing class at Columbia University. In 2001, she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times editorial page, and after six years she stepped down in order to finish her new book: "When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present."

The eleventh floor of the Houston Cole Library was filled with students, teachers and fans all eager to hear Collins speak.

She started off her speech by telling a story that happened at one of her first jobs in journalism during the 1970s in Connecticut. She recalled that on an upper-level floor, which was used for a meeting room, had no women's bathroom, only men's. When the women protested this, they met fierce competition. The first approach they took was replacing the men's sign with a unisex sign.

However, this did not go over well with their male colleagues, and they replaced it with an even larger "Men's Bathroom" sign.

After doing research, Collins proceeded to find a statute in Connecticut that stated every floor in a state building had to have one bathroom that was accessible to the handicap. So, Collins wrote a note saying that handicap women cannot get into this bathroom - a few days later, there was a sign on the bathroom that read, "This bathroom is for Men and Handicap Women Only."

Thus began her work for making people aware of women's right and the women before her who dedicated their lives to this cause.

Collins then started speaking about the world of communication, as she knew it. She began discussing the growing challenge of keeping the readers interest.

"Every sentence you write is a battle to maintain the attention of people who are multitasking…people are so distracted that the challenge of communicating is 10 times greater of when I was a kid and in college," said Collins.

She continued to relay another challenge in communication is finding a way to make people want to read the important stories.

"It's the best time in the history of the world. Every time we go into a new level of technology the way you communicate changes," Collins continued. "Our calling is to rework the way that journalism and communications works."

Continued...

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