PROGRAM INFORMATION

The Progressive Women’s Voices program has become a cornerstone of The Women’s Media Center. In our first year of the program, we intensively media trained 33 women who have gone on to earn over 1000 media hits year to date. Our inaugural class was a stellar group, with experts in foreign policy, reproductive rights, environmental issues, racial justice, voting rights, the history of feminism, immigrant communities, outsider cultures, national security, and many more areas of expertise. With our training and help, in 2008, our PWV women wrote Op Eds in the Washington Post and The New York Times, features for Elle and New York magazine, were quoted in USA Today, Forbes, Variety, Mother Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, on the Associated Press and Reuters wires, appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Nightly News, Fox News, ABC News, CNBC, The Tyra Banks Show, PBS’s “To The Contrary,” Bill Moyers, on numerous NPR shows, and in hundreds of other significant media outlets.

We are “changing the conversation” by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers. For the women chosen to participate in our 2009 Progressive Women’s Voices program, we provide intense media training sessions in New York, with weekly calls, and continued support and resources for media bookings.

This program was made possible through primary support from the NoVo Foundation, and additional funding from the Better World Fund of the United Nations Foundation, the University of Phoenix, the Charles Lawrence Keith and Clara Miller Foundation, the Friedman/Kiehl Fund and private donors.

Progressive Women’s Voices starts with training.

• In-person intensive training: The Women’s Media Center hosts all participants for three weekends of intensive training in New York City, and pays all travel and acommodation expenses for participants. This training includes message development, media techniques, rapid response, on-camera training for television, radio training, op ed writing, blogging and more
• Weekly interview practice: All PWV women participate in weekly simulated hostile radio show interview scenarios on conference call lines to practice interview techniques and get feedback from classmates. We have received extensive feedback that this preparation is extremely helpful in prepping for media that is not ideologically identical to your own
• A strong network of progressive women: Our participant listserv and Facebook group facilitates ongoing dialogue, allowing participants to share their successes and challenges. We have also seen our classes of women hire, promote, and generally help and support each other, personally and professionally.
• Web platform: The WMC invites many of our PWV women to participate in writing our WMC Exclusives and Commentaries and promotes those through our online contacts and media contacts. All participants also have an opportunity to blog for the WMC.
• Ongoing WMC strategy and support: The WMC helps each participant to prep for interviews and media opportunities, providing message feedback, editing, and technical support.
• Promotion and Pitching: From January through December of 2009, the WMC will be dedicating its staff to outreach on behalf of PWV participants to our contacts at all levels of the media, promoting the Progressive Women’s Voices participants as a polished source of expert commentary.

This is not just a training program – it is a stepping stone to changing the conversation and the view of the world as presented in the media.

The Women's Media Center is looking for talented, opinionated, progressive women who are willing to speak out about the issues that matter. Whether your expertise is war or peace, health care or technology, chances are you watch the news, and realize that progressive women’s voices, like yours, are missing.

The WMC will host three classes of Progressive Women’s Voices women for 2009. Each class will have about ten women from around the country. Travel and accomodation expenses are paid for three weekend trips to New York City to be trained by the WMC staff and consultants.

To see past PWV participants click here.