Margaret Sullivan remembered standing in front of a class of Northwestern University journalism students, stated an article in Poynter, which added that she noticed the difference there “from the newsroom meetings she had led in previous years.

“Her class of 20 had just three or four men. But in her decades-long career as a journalist and editor, she had become accustomed to news meetings with a dozen men and, at best, one other woman.

“It’s puzzling,” Sullivan said. “Does it mean that women are coming out of these journalism programs and going into other fields, rather than hard-edge journalism? Maybe. Does it mean that newspapers are continuing to hire more men than women even though more women are available? Maybe.”

“Each year, women comprise more than two-thirds of graduates with degrees in journalism or mass communications, and yet the media industry is just one-third women, a number that only decreases for women of color, reports show.

Since the 1970s, most American industries have demonstrated an upward trend in female employment. Journalism is flatlining.”

Sullivan, media columnist at The Washington Post, previously was public editor of the New York Times and former editor and vice president of The Buffalo News.

(Pictured above:  Attendees of The Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute, a five-week institute for rising high school seniors held at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.)