The Progressive Women's Voices Program

An Overbrook Foundation grantee, The Women’s Media Center, is now accepting applications for its 2009 Progressive Women’s Voices Classes. The Progressive Women’s Voices Program is an effort to “change the conversation” by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers.

In the first year of the program, WMC intensively media trained 33 women who have gone on to earn over 1000 media hits year to date. Its 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.

It’s great to see that they have had success with their first training. In 2008, the Progressive Women’s Voices 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.

So think you know of a woman whose voices should be heard in the media? WMC has three classes scheduled for the year, the first one in New York on February 6th-7th. Applications for the first class will be open until December 15th. Check out their website for complete program details.