Belle Boggs broke away from her two-year-old daughter for a few days at a major writers' conference and reflected afterward on finding the balance between caring for her child and her career: "I have loved becoming a mother, and I love my life as a writer-teacher-mother, but I see now the loneliness that afflicts you on the other side. In particular, the loneliness of the working mother or working parent who accommodates our broken child care and parental leave system."
Equity
The Guardian studied 20 million comments on its stories and put some numbers to the idea that female writers get the worst of it: "The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the 'top 10', one was Muslim and one Jewish. And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men." More from James Warren.
Almost 50 years after the Kerner Commission concluded that one cause of urban unrest was the lack of racial diversity in American newsrooms, Alex T. Williams writes that not much has changed: "Comparing the 2013 job placement rates, graduating minorities that specialized in print were 17 percentage points less likely to find a full-time job than non-minorities; minorities specializing in broadcasting were 17 percentage points less likely to find a full-time job."
Rose Eveleth describes what it's like to be a victim of "doxxing," the public posting of private data for purposes of harassment: "Your phone is full of vile text messages and rings continuously. Your e-mail is full of threatening messages and photographs of dead bodies. Twitter and Facebook — and other ways you might communicate with friends and family not physically present — are clogged with threats." Also: tips on how to prevent doxxing and what to do if it happens.