Angilee Shah, one of the founders of Women Do News, wrote a column for “The Cohort,” Poynter’s newsletter for women in media about the systemic problems of equity in news.
The news industry functions like an economy in many ways. Our currency — trust, reputation, belief in each others’ abilities — is based on faith in the system which tells us who and what is valuable. Wikipedia is a magnification of that system and so, like in the “real world,” credit is disproportionately conferred onto men. That system of who gets to be credible, or in Wikipedia’s vocabulary, who gets to be “notable,” is at the heart of our work.