The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Answer To E.J.'s Question of 'What's Missing'...Hint: It Isn't What You Think

E.J., you just asked what's missing from the list of finalists for the Mirror Awards just released by Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Despite the finalists' names that you mentioned (Eric Alterman, Ken Auletta, Seth Mnookin, Clive Thompson, Mark Bowden, Charlie LeDuff and Richard Pérez-Peña), the answer is NOT that women are missing. Among the finalists you didn't call out: Rachel Sklar for her piece in the Huffington Post on a misleading Pentagon story in the New York Times; Evgenia Peretz for her Vanity Fair piece on James Frey; Megan Garber for her commentary for the Columbia Journalism Review.

It's fair to call out the gender imbalance of the list of finalists. There are 23 men and only five women, if you count repeat offenders like Eric Alterman and Rachel Sklar separately for each category in which they appear. But let's not pose a rhetorical question that implies that the list is devoid of women entirely when in fact what it's missing is much murkier: strict gender balance. And as we have already debated on the blog, maybe 50-50 boy-girl splits for all awards is not really a reasonable—or even admirable—goal. Give women an equal education; choose unbiased panels of judges. But after that, if the men are producing the best stuff, then go ahead and let the best man win.