Megan Burbank’s note to readers suggests to me a sort of blueprint, though I’m having trouble quite summing up what for. This mysterious something is more than a meme but less than a manifesto. Perhaps I can awkwardly describe it as a Platform for Political Action, though that’s not really quite it. Anyway, maybe I can communicate the whole by calling out those parts that seem to me essential to the form.

In the first place, there’s the shaming. “It’s the shameful open secret of our industry”, supported by “damning” facts. Before you even know what it is, you not only know how to feel about it, you know how you damn well better not feel about it. The ‘shame opening’ is a kind of cognitive anesthetic, signaling the reader that what follows is an article of faith, not an object for consideration.

Next, there’s the false, yet unquestionable, assertion of a sort of religious truth. This sort of truth being different from the scientific kind in that what it lacks in accuracy it makes up for in piety. In Burbank’s note, it is her subtle conflation of intersectional diversity with viewpoint diversity. “In a precarious, politically corrupt era”, she asserts, we simply cannot afford not to have “quality journalism”; the sort of journalism that only comes from “a variety of voices.” That such variety is a product of diversity of race, gender and sexual orientation is simply taken for granted.

Certainly there’s some truth in this idea, but given the high bar Burbank holds up, given that we “can’t afford to perpetuate” journalism that “will be weaker, less comprehensive, and less nuanced,” treating this partial truth as if it were the whole truth doesn’t rise to the standard. The idea that nuance comes by throwing intersectional diversity at it just doesn’t hold water.

Which leads to a third essential element: the stridently cryptic slogan. I gather that understanding the slogan is a sort of demonstration of orthodoxy. If you don’t understand what A Day Without a Woman means, then shame on you, you’re either an oppressor of a useful idiot for oppressors. Whatever the case: shame!

Finally, Burbank’s note trumpeted what strikes me as a fourth essential element: the bold yet empty gesture. Her concluding challenge to bigger media outlets makes no sense. “[I]f we can do this, other outlets can too.” But the “this” she’s referring to is a one-off novelty issue produced entirely by women. Could other outlets pull a similar stunt? Certainly, but so what?

These last two elements, are less important, though they are essential to the overall form. It’s the first two, the yoking of shame to a faulty premise, that really matter. I’m in agreement that we need the strongest, must nuanced and comprehensive, journalism we can get. I just don’t think a shame-enforced false premise will get us there.