Earlier this year, the feminist writer Susan Estrich said that women's bylines appeared far less frequently than men's on newspaper opinion pages like those of The Los Angeles Times. Now, a Condé Nast editor is making a similar case against several of publishing's top general-interest magazines - including some owned by Condé Nast.
Ruth Davis Konigsberg, a deputy editor at Glamour, began counting bylines in Harper's, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic Monthly. Since the beginning of September, she has tallied 324 male bylines and 99 female ones. She has displayed the results on a Web site, www.womenTK.com.
"It started as a personal pet peeve, and I thought that someone should really be keeping track of it," she said, adding that the Web site was unrelated to her job at Glamour.
Cullen Murphy, the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly (61 male bylines to 18 female bylines, according to Ms. Davis Konigsberg's count), responded to questions from a reporter in an e-mail message: "The byline imbalance is endemic in public affairs magazines. At The Atlantic we are aware of the problem and have been actively taking steps to address it."
David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker (98 men to 27 women), Lewis Lapham of Harper's (28 to 6) and Gerald Marzorati of The New York Times Magazine (103 to 36), declined to comment. Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair (34 to 12), said in an e-mail message: "We don't assign stories based on gender, but now that Ruth Davis Konigsberg has helpfully shown us the error of our ways, henceforth all assignments will be equally balanced between the sexes."
Ms. Davis Konigsberg said she had no interest in instigating a fight. "I'm interested in starting a conversation," she said. "I don't think I'm going to be the chronicler of gender issues in journalism."
Her bosses at Condé Nast are aware of the Web site, though they hardly seem to be endorsing it. "We're looking at it," said Maurie Perl, a Condé Nast spokeswoman.
