Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 253: Julie DiCaro Won't Be 'Sidelined'
144 Plays4 years ago
Sports writer, podcast host, radio host, Julie DiCaro comes by to talk about her book Sidelined, a book about being a woman in America.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and find show notes to this and other episodes at brendanomeara.com.
Check out patreon.com/cnfpod for ways to support the show and get some cool swag!
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Length and Publicists
00:00:01
Speaker
Sometimes these podcasts run a little long. Other times you're given a tight window from a publicist and you just gotta roll with it, seeing efforts.
Julie DiCaro's Book and Sports Culture
00:00:13
Speaker
With that comes focus and that's what Julie DiCaro brought to our conversation when we talked about her new book, her first book.
00:00:23
Speaker
sidelined sports culture and being a woman in America. Julie has an interesting somewhat meandering road in sports talk radio and sports writing or coming to that genre.
Julie's Career Journey: Law to Sports Journalism
00:00:40
Speaker
She was a public defender for a number of years before following that itch for which there is no bomb save for pursuing the thing. I mean, she, she digs baseball in good of writing. I mean, take a listen.
00:00:53
Speaker
Chicago Cubs were the great love of my life along with Joan Didion. Oh man, I mean she's speaking my language so here we are. I am Brendan O'Mara and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:01:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm, this is the show where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Julie DiCaro steps up to the plate this
Online Trolling and Social Media Challenges
00:01:21
Speaker
week. She's got some thick skin because she deals with a lot of trolls as part of her job on sports radio, sports podcast, sports writing.
00:01:30
Speaker
I've never really been trolled before. That was until I had tagged Julie on Twitter to say what a nice time I had chatting with her. I did this twice and as a result I was trolled twice. First time a dude chimed in, are you the guy who apologized for being white? I was like, oh my god, what's happening? It's happening. And I wrote back, nope, and lifted that.
00:01:56
Speaker
The other time was me commenting on how tight the interview was and I called it my black album interview. And as you well know, that's a Metallica reference of which there are no shortage on this show. And it was just about being, having it being a tighter, shorter, but no less powerful interview.
00:02:15
Speaker
Uh, so someone wrote black album. Wow. You're a racist. And I was like, Oh my God. I'm like, it's a Metallica reference. And he had since deleted his account. So that's the kind of people that Julie often has to deal with.
00:02:29
Speaker
anyway. This is why I hate social media and if I have my way I will be 100% off of it in the next year and work solely from the newsletter and the blog and the podcast of course. So Julie and I talk a bit about social media among other things and writing influences and her a very important teacher she had growing up and also how to create more room for women in sports journalism.
00:02:54
Speaker
because there really is room for everybody. I mean, there's room for 10,000 billion white guys in this industry. There's certainly enough room for us. But before we get to that, a little bit of housekeeping. While I'm still on social media, you can say hi or keep the conversation going at cnfpod or on Twitter and Instagram. Show notes and newsletter signups are at brendanoeira.com. Hey, hey. And hey, listen, Roger Federer played without a coach for years.
00:03:21
Speaker
And then he did get one. You know, mid-late career.
Roger Federer and Editorial Coaching
00:03:26
Speaker
Why would the greatest of all time need a swing coach? Well, we can have a conversation whether he's now the greatest of all time anymore. Rafael Nadal might be, pains me to say it, but it might be true. Anyway, Federer did. And most likely, it was for accountability and to have someone in his corner who could see things that maybe he couldn't see anymore. And that's where I come in seeing efforts.
00:03:49
Speaker
If you want an editor coaching, I'm sorry I lean on sport metaphor, but that's just how my brain works. I'd be in your corner in your dugout for your book or your essay. And I just if you want that kind of encouragement and coaching, give me a call.
00:04:05
Speaker
I can never guarantee that whatever we work on will be published in your goal market or your book will be published, but it'll be in its best possible position and you'll learn a lot. And I know I will too. I never step at it. I never go into these things and not learn something about writing and editing as part of the process. And that's what it's all about. It's kind of about the journey.
00:04:26
Speaker
Not the destination as trite as that is so if you feel like leveling up I'd be thrilled and honored to help you get where you want to go email me Brendan at Brendan O'Mara dot com com com Also, I'm in the thick of reading summer essays and boy. This is gonna be hard to whittle them down Final product is gonna be dope the quote Tom Haverford
00:04:50
Speaker
but you'll only be able to listen to it if you're a member of the Patreon community. For as little as $2 a month, you'll get exclusive access to the audio magazine.
Support and Community Engagement
00:05:01
Speaker
You can bump up from there to get transcripts and coaching. Thing is, every dollar goes towards the production of the magazine and this podcast, and many of those dollars will also go right into the pockets of writers whose work I accept or hire out.
00:05:16
Speaker
You're not just letting me keep the lights on here at CNF pot HQ. You're giving juice to other writers. And I get it. For years and years, this thing has been free and it will continue to be free. And then, but then I have the audacity to pass around a dish. I get it. It's tough. And I can't thank the patrons enough. And oh, by the way, shout out to three new patrons, April Donna and Tom Thomas. I think Thomas or maybe it's Thomas.
00:05:46
Speaker
Three new patrons. Love it, baby. All of you are supporting the community in the show, and I make the show for you in the community. So anyway, enough of that noise for now. Stay tuned for my parting shot at the end of the show. It's a bit of a grouchy one, but what are you gonna do? That's why I put it on at the end of the show.
00:06:03
Speaker
pulling up the rear, so there's also a chance to earn free coaching for a piece of your work. I'll tease that out, too. So, end of the show, stay tuned, but in the meantime, are you ready to sprint out onto the field and put Julie in because she's ready to play, baby? Are you ready? Let's do it. Riff five.
00:06:34
Speaker
Awesome.
Julie's Writing Influences and Inspirations
00:06:35
Speaker
Now I think a good place to start with respect to your writing and your career might be to go all the way back to your AP English teacher and Fred Peterson and how he said one day you would write a book and he put Joan Diddy in your hands and maybe he can take us to that moment how influential that was.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, my lifelong love affair with Joan Didion began in that moment. Yeah, I had a wonderful AP English teacher who taught us to diagram sentences to the point where I still do it for fun and made us as 15, 16-year-olds read things like The New Yorker and printed out John Updike and Joan Didion and had us read all these wonderful pieces.
00:07:17
Speaker
Having someone at a young age, I think when you're still very unsure of yourself and where your place in the world is, having someone say, I see something in you and I think that you're going to do great things is really powerful when you're a teenager. It's powerful when you're an adult.
00:07:33
Speaker
And so, yeah, Fred Peterson is a much beloved teacher from my area of Northern Illinois, right on the Wisconsin border. And so when I was writing the acknowledgments for this book, I've had so many great teachers over the years, but he was the one that really stood out to me as someone who I wish had lived to see me publish a book. Right. Yeah, exactly. But he was kind of there on your shoulder, I imagine, the entire time you were writing this.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, gosh, I definitely still don't, you know, I still do the thing where I go through and cut out like just a ton of words after I'm done writing. Cause that's what he used to do. He taught us to write very tightly. Um, he, you know, he had us reading Strunk and White and all kinds of other, uh, style books and everything back, you know, when, when we were teenagers and we thought it was absolutely horrible. And why are you doing this to us? And you know, here we all are working years later. And it's interesting how many of us still talk about going back to the things that he taught us.
00:08:30
Speaker
And what was it do you think that he saw in you as a young person in your writing that he wanted to see blossom in you over time? You know, when I was a kid, I always won writing awards for writing like fiction, so I'd make up these little stories. And I would, you know, and I won a computer when I was a kid for writing a story for some contest.
00:08:51
Speaker
Um, you know, it was always sort of fiction, sort of sci-fi stuff that I wrote. And, um, but it was in, in his class that it was nonfiction, that he, you know, felt like I think that I had something to say. And, um, you know, I really believe that if you don't read, you can't write. I know I hear people say, you know, Oh, I don't read anything, you know, writers, which just boggles my mind. Because I think what he taught me to do is take all the elements I liked from other writers and incorporate them into my own style.
00:09:21
Speaker
And I think he was just very good at figuring out who really had something to say. And I've always been extremely opinionated. I've always had a lot of thoughts. And he encouraged me to put those down on paper and work them into my writing. Yeah, that's so critical. It's the only way you can really develop a voice, whether that be quite literal voice in terms of being on radio or podcasting, but certainly in writing is by
00:09:48
Speaker
putting it all into the soup. And then as you mix that all in over the course of time and repetition and rigor, that's where your voice will surface. And yeah, I don't get it either when people say like, I don't read, I just write. It's like, nah, you need to put gas in the tank so you can see what burns well.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Yeah, and I am so fortunate. I mean, I remember it being a requirement of his class that we subscribed to The New Yorker. So we were reading in high school, you know, the best writers in the world, whether it was fiction or nonfiction, learning how people craft stories. And I remember reading, you know, the first time I read Joan Diddy and I remember her talking about reading things that other people wrote to try to steal tips and tricks from them and how you present something.
00:10:37
Speaker
So, I mean, even Joan Didion is out there reading other people and still developing and working on her style. And I think you're exactly right that, you know, and I think that words are words, whether they're written or whether they're coming out of your mouth or, you know, you're putting them on form in, you know, in video that it's really all about learning how to choose the right words to get across what you want to say. I don't always fail. I don't always succeed at it. I mean, there are definitely things where I look at even the finished book and I'm just like, oh, that part is so cringy.
00:11:06
Speaker
Um, but you know, like I, and I think on writing by Stephen King is, is one of those great books that every writer should have. Yeah. Because it's not only, it's not only instructive, but it's also like a big, you know, pep talk going, you know, it's sort of like edging you on, like you can
Julie's Career Transition and Challenges
00:11:21
Speaker
do it. You can do it. Come on. You know, and I, that is a book that I cherish very much as well.
00:11:26
Speaker
Excellent. And so as you progress, of course, you have a career in law before you get into sports journalism and sports radio. So maybe take us to at least the early stages when you're in law and then maybe that little thing that's kind of knocking on your door of this other thing that you needed to, and it's you needed to scratch.
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, I started out as a public defender. That's where I was radicalized to be the progressive person I am today. After I left the public defender's office, I practiced family law, I did some criminal defense, but I had originally gone to journalism school because I wanted to cover sports. When I graduated, I could not see the path.
00:12:11
Speaker
from what I was doing to working where I wanted to work, even if I wanted to go to a small town newspaper and cover high school sports, it still felt like you were in line behind three other people to get to cover high school sports, which are great and vital and dynamic and great to write about, but not exactly what we're looking at when we say I want to be in sports journalism. Most of us are looking at something higher up, professional sports.
00:12:36
Speaker
So I, you know, I left it and I went to be a lawyer and, and I always, you still love sports, obviously. And the Chicago Cubs were the great love of my life along with Joan Didion. And so, um, when blogging became a thing, I started off sort of frequenting blogs, um, sports blogs and talking about baseball. And then, um, I started my own blog and had a pretty good following and the Chicago Tribune one day picked up my blog.
00:13:03
Speaker
and invited me to, you know, have it be hosted on their network and they would help me promote it. And, um, eventually went to work for the Tribune. And then when a sports talk radio station said in Chicago, you know, we're starting up an all sports talk station. We'd like you to be a part of it. That was when I saw the opportunity to jump into it. But if I hadn't been doing this blogging all along, I never would have been able to leave law and I'd probably still be there.
00:13:28
Speaker
I love how in the book you talk about, especially when you started to get on mic, that you realized that you had to put in a critical amount of preparation to make up for the fact that you were the only woman in the studio and you had to do that much more work and you equated it to the kind of work that you had to do in the prep as a lawyer. So what did that preparation look like?
00:13:52
Speaker
because as you well know and as your book so eloquently puts, women are just perpetually behind the eight ball, especially in sports.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I would see guys come in, sit down 15 minutes before their show started, just open the mic and just start talking. And I always felt like, and I know many other women in the industry feel this way, you cannot make a mistake. If you make a mistake, it's going to be, this is why women shouldn't be in sports. You probably got your job sleeping with your boss, blah, blah, blah. Whereas I would hear guys make mistakes all the time.
00:14:22
Speaker
Um, so I started approaching my writing and approaching my shows the same way I would, I would write down an argument for a jury, a closing argument. Here's what I think and here's all the research I have that backs up my point of view. Um, and I felt like I had to do that constantly. Um, otherwise, first of all, there's the, there's the idea of, you know, people, men in sports talk radio who listen to sports talk radio, not believing you unless it's verified by a guy. So that was the first thing.
00:14:50
Speaker
But then the other thing was, like I said, I mean, Jessica Mendoza told me in the book how nervous she was for a year calling Sunday Night Baseball because she felt so much pressure and felt like if I make a mistake, that's going to be it for women in the baseball broadcast booth. So the few women that are on the air in various outlets or working and have a beat, there's a lot of pressure to never, ever make a mistake.
00:15:16
Speaker
And eventually my audience, you know, on the radio knew me well enough that I could just be like, what did I say? Oh, I'm stupid. You know, kind of thing. Um, and they knew enough that, you know, I, that I knew enough that it was just, that was misspeaking. It wasn't like I was really stupid. But when you start out until that audience gets to know you, there's a lot of people who are going to assume that you're stupid. So you have to be really careful about getting everything right.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I love the tone of the
Sports as a Medium for Feminist Issues
00:15:44
Speaker
book. And given that you're in sports radio, it read to me very much like a very well, like a very polished sort of like an open that sort of opening that 10 minute opening section of any like good, any good radio show. And I felt like the whole book just had that ring to it. Was that kind of in the back of your mind as you were writing this book that it was going to kind of be in that vein?
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I was really lucky in being able to write it because I started writing it when I still was working in sports radio. And I was sort of like, oh my God, what is going to happen when this book comes out? I was worried about what my colleagues were going to say, what people in the industry were going to say. And then I wound up when the pandemic hit, sports radio was just decimated across the board. And I was one of the people that lost my job. So that freed me up a lot.
00:16:36
Speaker
to say things that I might not have otherwise said. And the other thing is that it's not really a book about sports. It's a book about feminism and about issues that women face across the board. It's just that sports is so wild in terms of, it's sort of like Anchorman. It's just a throwback to this weird time when anything goes in the office and it's really strange. And coming from law, that was really weird to me.
00:17:05
Speaker
Um, because you know, and law is far from perfect, but at least people know what the rules are in sports media. It felt like no one knew what the rules were. So you've got like, you know, naked women on shared computers and you've got people drawing stuff on the whiteboard in the studio. That's very off color and things like that. So I, and I know these are issues that women are dealing with across the board. Um, it's.
00:17:27
Speaker
Something that i thought sports is a great way to sort of just a jumping off point like here's what happened to serena williams where a man you know totally screwed out of you know the us open title which you know we can debate but you know it humiliated her on national tv and made her cry.
00:17:44
Speaker
And we have all cried at work, and here's why women cry at work, and here's what you can do about it, and here's what it means, and why we're conditioned this way. And so it's not, like I said, my fear is that people are going to take the book and put it on the sports section in bookstores. And it's really much more of, I think, a book about feminism and what it's like to be a feminist in America in 2021.
00:18:10
Speaker
Oh, for sure. To me, sports is oftentimes just a great vector to talk about things that are bigger than sport. And this, to me, I read basically an ethnography of an ongoing epidemic of sexism and misogyny. And you just have sports as the backdrop is the way to open the door, and then you can come through and kick it and be like, well, this is what it's really about, guys.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, sports in this country, or I know people from other places in the world are just kind of befuddled at how much sports invades our lives on a daily basis. But it is where we work through so many issues in society, whether it's Jackie Robinson integrating baseball before America was integrated, whether it's Muhammad Ali bringing the fight over the Vietnam War to people's living rooms, or
00:18:59
Speaker
Billie Jean King fighting for gender rights and LGBTQ rights on the tennis court, or even the Black Lives Matter movement we saw last summer that was led hugely by the WNBA, and to a lesser extent, the NBA. So sports has always been where we work out these issues. And for some reason, whatever the issue is, in sports, it's just sort of on steroids.
00:19:21
Speaker
And so for that reason, I think it makes it a good, again, jumping off point to talk about these issues that affect a broader society.
The Impact of Online Harassment on Women
00:19:31
Speaker
And there's a moment in the book, too, where you wrote that you have prided yourself as standing up to bullies. And there's a moment, too, where there was a moment where you could have jumped in there. But just the way the troll culture is, you have to have an internal calculus. Like, is this a fight I want to have if I otherwise is going to expose potentially my private life, my family, et cetera?
00:19:57
Speaker
Do you think that being able to write this book was in some way a way to course correct for some of those times where maybe you didn't get into the fight that you wanted to get into? And this was your treatise to stand up and say this is enough?
00:20:14
Speaker
You know, I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's probably true. That's probably what my therapist would say. Yeah. I mean, one of the big problems with the way women are treated in the media is that you wind up self-censoring all the time. So, you know, and I've had so many women who have huge platforms and are very prominent voices say,
00:20:31
Speaker
you know, when, for example, you know, allegations came out against this person. Like, I really wanted to speak up, but I didn't have the bandwidth to deal with it that day because I knew what was going to happen. And, you know, I think that when we talk about online harassment, what a lot of people hear is they called you names as opposed to what it really is, which is, you know, trying to insinuate themselves into every part of your life, trying to find out where your kids go to school so they can harass them, trying to find out who you're married to and where they work.
00:21:01
Speaker
calling your employer and telling them all kinds of horrible things about you, scouring every evidence of your life online to try to find bad things you've done in the past that they can bring up now. And there's never enough characters on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook to explain this to people.
00:21:20
Speaker
So, I mean, I think they're very good at taking whatever you say completely out of context, spinning it around and making it look like you said something horrible.
00:21:35
Speaker
A lot of, you know, the trolls are not gonna read this book. But a lot of other people, I hope a lot of other people do and understand exactly what it is we're talking about when we are talking about online harassment and why we don't always jump into the fight. So all people say to me all the time, hey, you didn't comment on this. Like, you know, I took a week off from social media and I came back to a bunch of people wanting to know why I hadn't weighed in on Deshaun Watson yet. And it's sort of like, why is it my job to weigh in on every single issue?
00:22:04
Speaker
And so you find yourself in this really weird place, and you're right, it's a constant tension between having to be online so that you can do your job and promote your work, which is increasingly a bigger part of it, and wanting mental health and peace of mind. So we're constantly doing this calculus to try to figure out, you know, what do I do today? Do I go on Twitter? Do I stay off it? What if something big happens? And it's just an unfortunate position to be in.
00:22:32
Speaker
And you also cite that, you know, one in six women has been the victim of attempted rape or completed rape, which just, that number just blew, blew my mind.
Addressing Rape Culture and Social Media Reform
00:22:42
Speaker
I knew it was kind of high. I didn't realize it was that high. And, you know, you write about it so well and like raw and viscerally in the, in the early parts of the book too, especially regarding say, like Derek Rose, Kobe Bryant.
00:22:56
Speaker
and everything. It just blew me away to read that. It was just really sad and alarming.
00:23:05
Speaker
It is sad and alarming. Yeah, it's alarming, of course. We have a rape epidemic in this country. The thing that I always try to tell people is whenever you make a joke online or call a victim a liar or suggest that someone is after money or whatever, there are people in your life who have been raped, who can see you.
00:23:31
Speaker
I was a person who, I grew up watching, I was in high school when Anita Hill trials happened, Anita Hill hearings happened. And the message I took away from that is, there's nothing you can do to push back against all these men. So, if something happens to you, don't even bother. And when I eventually was sexually assaulted, I didn't tell anybody for decades.
00:23:55
Speaker
because I had learned from watching what happens in society to women who come forward, that it basically destroys your life. And it starts with the police that investigate and it goes through the court system. And there's very rarely happy endings in sexual assault cases for the victims. So it's an issue that I think we have yet to really grapple with as a country. And I'd always hoped that sports would help us do that. And maybe it still will, but thus far we haven't gotten there.
00:24:25
Speaker
And you write a lot about social media and just how toxic it is, but also how necessary it is for your line of work. If you had to in some way reform it in some way where it wasn't such a cesspool of bullshit, how would you go about doing that so it's a safer place?
00:24:49
Speaker
That's a great question. Um, you know, I think first of all, I don't believe Twitter even has a real person looking at reports because when you, when you report a tweet and you say, you know, and they are like, Oh, what's the problem? And you're like, well, this person is threatening to come to my house and rape me. And they're like, Oh, I'm so sorry. That doesn't violate our community guidelines. Like I'm convinced this is an algorithm because no real person could ever come to that determination.
00:25:11
Speaker
And yet it happens to women over and over and over again. So that's the first thing. I don't know how you fix that problem, but you need to fix it because it's bad. There's also no understanding of like cyber stalking. So unless the person's tweet is, not even then, but your Twitter is looking for is the tweet that's like, you know, I'm coming to your house right now to kill you.
00:25:35
Speaker
And that's rarely what you get, what you're much more likely to get are, like for example, there are guys who spend their entire day tweeting about me. They've, you know, they pretend it's me on the account, like they do plays off my name, and everything is about how horrible I am.
00:25:51
Speaker
That is much more soul crushing. It's maybe not as imminently dangerous, but I think it takes a real toll on people's mental health. So I mean, that's one thing. Another thing is you need to find a way to block people by IP addresses. So I block a guy and then he makes 10 more accounts.
00:26:10
Speaker
And Twitter's fine with this. And you can even say, hey, this is this guy who I've blocked three times and he just keeps making new accounts. And Twitter's like, well, that's not our problem. And I think something else that would really help is if employers cared what happens to their reporters on social media. So, I mean, I talk about a lot of hot button issues that get a lot of people angry, but I know plenty of women who are just the epitome of keep your head down and do your job, who get it as well.
00:26:37
Speaker
And you can't require people to be on social media and tell them how they need to be tweeting and promoting their show and promoting their work, and then just leave them out there twisting in the wind when the trolls descend for doing their job. And ESPN, I talk about in the book, I think does a better job than anybody of protecting their employees from online harassment. But most women who go through this go through it alone.
Professionalism in Sports Media
00:27:03
Speaker
You write, too, that you just want the industry to grow the fuck up, too. That's right. Oh, I can say fuck. That's great. I wish I had known that earlier in the podcast.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. I mean, you know, I worked in places where guys were running the halls, like it was a frat house. And, you know, like I said, drawing pictures in the studio on the whiteboard and naked women on the screen savers. And it's just sort of like, are you kidding me? Like this is what you think a workplace looks like. And, you know, it's sort of like left off as boys will be boys by the powers that be.
00:27:39
Speaker
And it's just kind of amazing to me that, you know, here we are in 2021 knowing that you can be sued for this kind of thing. And it's still just happening all over the place. And I have so many women told me stories that I couldn't even include in the book because they were afraid for their jobs. But across the board in this industry, the stuff that is happening in workplaces is unbelievable.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, and you also write to how you would think that more women would, it's starting to happen now, especially with galvanized and everything, but that more women would band together and try to rise the tide. But what you've found is that
00:28:17
Speaker
because there are so few slots that are allotted to women in studios or covering whatever sport is that there's competition in infighting to get those rare spots. So it's like almost, you would think there would be more banding together and you're hoping that it will happen and it's probably getting more steam that way, but for so long,
00:28:40
Speaker
there was a lot of fighting and competition among gendered peers. And in fact, the best thing to do is to try to band together. Yeah, for sure. I think we're starting to turn the corner on that. There are definitely still women in the industry who
00:28:58
Speaker
everyone knows about and they're like, oh, she's not a, she's not a, she wants to be the only woman in the room is usually how we say it. Um, so, but yeah, I mean, because, you know, there is only going to be one, there is going to be one token woman on this show and everybody wants to be that person. So you start looking at the women around you as competition rather than allies. And to be, to be fair, I think that's something women are conditioned to do as little girls.
00:29:23
Speaker
that you know beauty pageants and you know who's prettier and who's got the better clothes and who's got the cuter boyfriend and you know I think that women see each other as competition because society tells us to from a very early age but I've been really lucky and it was you know not until a little bit later in my my late 30s that I started
00:29:43
Speaker
really seen other women as, you know, we all need to be lifting each other up and lifting as we climb because there really is room for everybody. I mean, there's room for 10,000 billion white guys in this industry. There's certainly enough room for us. And would you say it's fair to say that that you that you stay in this business more as a means of keeping the door open behind you, almost like mission driven than than the actual content of covering sports?
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I do, I mean, I love sports and I love the intersection of sports and social and racial justice.
Women in Sports and Media Representation
00:30:19
Speaker
Like that's always, that's been my passion since I was a public defender that I want to talk about big issues and issues that affect our country. And I do love going to a baseball game and I love watching the Cubs and I'm a diehard Bears fan. And so yeah, I mean, I care about all that stuff, but at the same time, we've got so many women leaving this industry.
00:30:40
Speaker
Um, you know, you see more women on TV, but if you take ESPN out of the mix, the numbers of women in this industry are actually going down, especially in print media. So yeah, there's a sense of obligation that we need to stand here and hold the door, like Hodor, you know, just like stand here and hold the door for the women coming behind us. And then maybe I'll be able to branch out and do other things. But until then, it feels like I am a placeholder for the women coming behind me.
00:31:09
Speaker
And where would you say your optimism lies at this point? Well, first of all, with the incredible generation coming behind me who are just much more confident, much more, much bolder, much more able to ask for what they want than my generation was, I love that about them. And then I think when, you know, we have nights like the other night when everyone's watching, everyone on Twitter is watching Yukon versus Baylor in the women's tournament.
00:31:34
Speaker
or the huge surge in viewership the WNBA got last year, or the fact that after the US women win the World Cup, the entire stadium is chanting equal pay. Those are the kinds of moments that give me so much hope. And I think the more we see women around sports, playing sports, in sports, the more normal we make that.
00:31:56
Speaker
And the less of an outlier every woman who's around sports is, the more progress we make. And it feels like we're in a really good place right now with women's professional sports in this country growing, getting new sponsorships. The Women's Professional Soccer League, the NWSL, just announced two new sponsors, Nationwide Insurance and Ally, so big sponsors who are
00:32:18
Speaker
who are going to be contributing to the league. That kind of stuff is what gives me hope and just sort of the expanding, taking up space of women in sports.
Julie's Media Recommendations
00:32:28
Speaker
Excellent. And something I always like to kind of end the show on as I bring the airliner down for a landing is to ask a guest for a recommendation of some kind. And that can be anything from a new kind of coffee you're trying to a podcast or a movie or a book you've read. So I'd extend that to you, Julie. What's something you might recommend for the listeners out there?
00:32:48
Speaker
Okay, so I've got two real quick things. So one, a shocking number of people have not seen Cobra Kai, which is amazing to me. So it's on Netflix. It is the continuation of Daniel and Johnny Lawrence's story from Karate Kid. So that's huge. And the other thing, and this is much darker, is that I think if you haven't seen the Alan versus Pharaoh documentary on HBO, it's dark. It's at times difficult to get through, but I think it's really important
00:33:17
Speaker
to watch, not to come out with a determination of what you think about Woody Allen, although you probably will, but I think to sort of go back and dissect and talk about how this case was covered in the media and why it took until this point for people to start being like, hey, I think there might be something up with Woody Allen, and how many people carried water for him and helped sort of
00:33:43
Speaker
I don't want to say sweep it under the rug, but help make it not a thing, if that makes any sense. There's just a lot of people involved in making sure that this didn't become a thing. And so I thought it was really well done, and I hope people watch it.
00:33:56
Speaker
Awesome.
Podcast Reflections and Listener Engagement
00:33:57
Speaker
Well, Julia, I loved your book and I can't wait for people to get it in their hands because it's so eye-opening and it's one of those must-reads. I think it's a very important book for people to read to get a sense of where we are today and where we need to go. So I just want to thank you and commend you for the work and thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Oh, gosh, that's so nice of you to say. I really appreciate that and I had a great time. No one else has asked me about Fred Peterson, so that was great. Awesome.
00:34:30
Speaker
Well, ain't that great? Thank you, Julie. And thanks to you listeners for sticking around, supporting the show, and hanging out here. This is kind of the after party, right? This is where we all went to the bar, we had a good time, or we went out, we went to the concert, and we're not ready.
00:34:51
Speaker
We're not quite ready to go home yet, so we have a little after party here a little subdued kind of chill You know you might want to get some more water than you've been drinking the rest of the in the evening prior And you get some water maybe and maybe a nightcap, and we're just gonna sit around Lava lamp is plugged in
00:35:11
Speaker
That's what we're doing. That's what this is all about right here. So like I teased at the top of the show, if you want what amounts to a free 60 to 90 minute sort of coaching session of my time, coach up a piece of your work, leave a kind review on Apple podcasts, you know, or wherever you listen to your podcast, if they do reviews,
00:35:30
Speaker
When it publishes, take a screenshot, send it to me. At that point, I will coach up a piece of your work of up to 2,000 words. And if you find that experience enlightening and want to continue in greater depth, we can talk scope and rates at that point. Sound cool? All right, good. I'm seeing a lot of heads nodding, I like that.
00:35:50
Speaker
And if you leave a review, I might give you a mad shout out too. Like this one from Adina Gia. Best podcast ever. An honorific one can only deploy once. Creative nonfiction podcast with Brendan O'Mara packs a punch. Brendan reflects on crafts are thoughtful. His interviewing reflects the years he spent honing his own craft as a reporter. His guests are compelling.
00:36:17
Speaker
I will follow this podcast for as long as it exists and look forward to listening over and over again. Big thanks to Brendan for this phenomenal, much needed addition to the podcast universe. Big ups. Thank you very much. Love it, baby. Leave a reveal. I'll read on there. You deserve that kind of a shout out. So I enrolled in a Kimbo's, uh, Kimbo by Seth Godin, uh, freelancers workshop.
00:36:43
Speaker
Excuse me, got a yard. Hang tight. Whoa, okay. I caught enrollment on day one, so I got $150 off the normal tuition. And since it's Freg, my media company of One Exit Three Media, LLC, it's a write-off in the end. Whoopee!
00:37:04
Speaker
So as you know it includes, Exit 3 kind of includes this podcast and producing pods for others, branded writing and journalism as well as editing. So that's the tripod Exit 3 media stands on. I need to extricate myself from the relative toxicity of what can only be termed as a dead-end day job. I'm not hating on it, it's nice, it's steady.
00:37:26
Speaker
I have a pretty incredible autonomy and am largely ignored, so in a way it's ideal. But it saps the meat of my day away from doing meaningful work for myself and others.
00:37:39
Speaker
I don't need to be super rich, but I want to make a life and a living that affords me and my wife and Hank over here, the dog, the producer, and some degree of comfort and freedom, and at least make me geographically agnostic in terms of my work, helped have a wanderlust of a wife, and she is the breadwinner by a pole and the source of the health insurance. So we go where Melanie goes.
00:38:09
Speaker
And I hope to share some of those insights from the course, usually in these parting shots. If I see anything that's of value that doesn't take up too much time, I will share it. So part of the learning is the teaching, if you ask me. I was sadly on Twitter the other day and I got really annoyed by someone I follow.
00:38:32
Speaker
popped into my feed, algorithmically nudged into my feed. Just shameless is the only way I can say it. Shameless in self-promotion. And they beat the same drum over and over and over again. And I'm like, dude, I get it. This is your thing.
00:38:52
Speaker
I remember like 25 years ago or so my sister telling me about baseball or whatever it's like if you're good enough people will notice and in that thing I was like okay this person is just tremendously insecure something I understand but I get and the well-intentioned is is trying way too hard way too hard
00:39:13
Speaker
On top of that, I was supposed to do a pod swap with this person back in the day, as in, like, I'm on my show, I go on theirs. It's kind of the deal. I held up my end of the deal. They did not. Am I being petty? A little bitter? Taking the low road. You know what? Sort of. But hey, you know, I'm not perfect. I should just ignore it. But I can't shake that weird vibration that starts within me and it gets me so angry. And I don't know why.
00:39:42
Speaker
when I see these things on Twitter like that. It's another reason why I just need to be off it entirely. I'm sorry to show these warts, but it's the warts that make us relatable, right? Makes us human. Hell, this entire podcast is about the warts of art. You think Steven Pressfield, author of War of Art, will get behind that? Maybe. He's someone I want on this show.
00:40:11
Speaker
I think it's possible. I think it could happen. All right. Think about the Patreon. Lots of goodies for you to shop for. Think about the newsletter for book recommendations, podcast news, cool articles, CNF and happy hour, which I forgot to include in April. So hopefully in May I'll remember and we'll do another happy hour.
00:40:33
Speaker
book raffles, you know, you name it. It's good stuff. It's where I'm going to be. It's where the information is going to come from, especially when I totally pull myself out of the matrix of social media. So stay cool, CNFers. Stay cool forever. See ya.
00:41:08
Speaker
you