Going through my English newspapers recently, I came across an article which proved to me that other columnists were facing the same dilemma. Zoe Heller's article dealt with the problem of women columnists. Putting more of oneself in a column can be flattering, and few journalists are immune to such flattery. The new journalists, Heller explains, are not asked to do more research, carry out more interviews, think up a new introduction, or rewrite that boring middle section. They are simply being asked to insert more of themselves into the copy.
Heller goes on to explain the specific problems of women writers.
She mentions the categories in which women's writing operates. Then there is the stern commentary piece, in which public affairs are examined from a female point of view. There is also the confessional genre, in which a woman writer describes her escapades. Yet all women avoid political writing. What women reveal in their writing leads readers to feel that they have come to know the writer in person.