Nancy Riordan and other women backing Estrich did not want to comment on her feud with Kinsley. They similarly were not dissuaded by reports that the Los Angeles Times published more opinion pieces from women than the New York Times and Washington Post.
"I think it's irrelevant what the others are doing," Riordan said. "The [Los Angeles] Times needs to do something about this. Using someone else's bad example doesn't justify doing the wrong thing."
Kinsley said he can't explain why men have dominated op-ed pages at The Times and other papers. But he and the three men who help him run the section all said they were keeping an eye out for talented female commentators.
They noted the hiring in the last year of Margaret Carlson, a familiar voice from Time magazine and television, as a regular columnist. Kinsley added that he tried but was unable to make Barbara Ehrenreich a regular commentator. Her last book on the struggles of the middle class received wide critical acclaim.
Nick Goldberg, who oversees opinion columns and reports to Kinsley, said Carroll has put particular emphasis on another kind of diversity. "He made no secret he wanted the news pages to be politically objective and the opinion pages ideologically balanced, if not every day, over time," Goldberg said.
Gail Collins, editorial page editor of the New York Times, said many newspapers need to confront the gender issue.
"I think you could fill every page, every day with great women opinion writers," Collins said, "but, that said, the entire pool of people out there doing opinion writing right now is still tilted toward men."
Despite writing an ambitious book on the history of women in America, Collins said she has no special insight into why the op-ed imbalance persists.
"I presume that it's because we are coming out of two millennia of prejudice against women having strong public opinions," Collins said, adding: "I don't think this will last.... The person in my job in 15 or 20 years I don't think will be having this conversation."
