Local Author, Academic and Humorist Gina Barreca Joins Civility Panel

The Connecticut Forum Announces:
Gina Barreca to Join David Gergen and Christopher Buckley at
The End of Civility?
Saturday, October 2, 2010

Deemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman” by Dave Barry, Gina Barreca is most recently the author of It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World. She has appeared on 20/20, 48 Hours, NPR, the BBC, The Today Show, CNN, Joy Behar, and Oprah to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor.

Her earlier books include the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor, and Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League; her books have been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German. She’s the editor of seventeen books, including The Signet Book of American Humor and The Penguin Book of Women’s Humor as well as The Erotics of Instruction and A Sit-Down With the Sopranos.

You may recognize Barreca's name from her weekly column in The Hartford Courant, "Irreconcilable Differences". She also writes for the "Brainstorm" section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, blogs for Psychology Today, and occasionally spars with her former co-author (of I'm With Stupid: One Man, One Woman, and 10,000 of Misunderstandings between the Sexes Cleared Right Up) Gene Weingarten in his "Below the Beltway" column in The Washington Post. With degrees from Dartmouth College, Cambridge University, and the City University of New York, Barreca is Professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Barreca on her female students and their fear of not dating:

Hartford Courant Slashes 100 Jobs

Breaking News! The news is...breaking.

The Hartford Courant, our "country's oldest newspaper in continuous publication," announced today its plan to eliminate about 100 jobs this week - an action prompted by "local business conditions...rather than bankruptcy," according to Stephen D. Carver, publisher and chief executive officer.

Media insiders have more to say on the matter, but any way you slice it, the future's looking mighty grim for print media.

New Bill Seeks Special Courts for Veterans in CT

Connecticut may be the next state to allow special considerations for war veterans facing non-violent criminal charges.

Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney (D) of New Haven has introduced a bill that would create special courts for these vets that could refer counseling in lieu of jail time if it can be proven that combat experience played a role in their criminal behavior.

"Our troubled veterans may not need to be locked up if their combat experience has led to psychological wounds," Looney told the Hartford Courant Sunday.

"I feel that I would be supportive of it as long as there were reviews into each case," says twenty- four-year old Stratford, Connecticut native Cpl. John F. Carrano Jr., USMC ret. who completed two tours of Iraq.

"The amount of people who claim post traumatic stress disorder and other things like that who don't deserve to is already disheartening enough, never mind how many people would jump to claim their crimes were a result of being deployed," Carrano said. "I love the fact that the troubles of returning veterans are being recognized and actions to help us out are being taken, however this plan would need a lot of work to secure justice within itself and I feel it would be very difficult to separate the legitimate cases and the cases of people trying to work the system to get themselves out of trouble. I would love to see something like this actually work out but it is going to take a lot of work and resources."

New York, California, and Minnesota are also in the process of passing similar bills.

What do you think?

"A preacher, a rabbi and an atheist walk into a bar..."

This Sunday "The Dot" column in The Hartford Courant will feature a Connecticut Forum contest!

Submit your funniest punchline for the joke - "A preacher, a rabbi and an atheist walk into a bar..." for a chance to win Forum tickets and to hear your joke read at The Forum.

Submit your punchline by posting a comment here (be sure to include your email address or other contact information) or by emailing us at info@ctforum.org.

Forum Holiday Highlights

What happens when diverse groups of people from across the spectrum of our community get together for a little holiday merriment?


Pure magic.

Check out the photos and blog post featured on the Hartford Courant's website about The Connecticut Forum's 16th Annual Children's Holiday Party for more than 250 Hartford Elementary school children - an event made possible by the gracious support of Target Stores, the Hartford Marriott Downtown, Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and our incomparable army of Forum volunteers.

Happy Holidays!

The Uncertain Future of Print Journalism

By Jamie Daniel, Advancement Associate at The Forum

The Tribune Company, which owns The Hartford Courant as well as The Chicago Cubs, 10 dailies and 23 TV Stations, filed for bankruptcy yesterday in an effort to buy itself more time to either save or sell its ailing businesses. Although other papers are experiencing tough times (even newspaper giant The New York Times is talking with lenders to help repay the staggering debt it owes) The Tribune Co. has been operating in the red for so long and spreading itself so thin with outsourcing that media experts and company insiders acknowledge that it will likely be close to impossible for them to recover, even with serious overhauling.

It's hard to know exactly what this growing instability of the medium, coupled with the economic crises, means for the future of print journalism. Buyouts are encouraging some of the best, most experienced (read: highest-paid) journalists to leave their papers, and those who remain are left to deal with job insecurity and low company morale. While journalism can certainly be effective, provocative and informative through the channel of new media - where costs are lower, advertisers are more easily enticed and news feeds can be updated in real time - I still feel an early onset of nostalgia for what hasn't even been lost yet. There is something so wonderfully serendipitous about reading the newspaper and stumbling upon an unexpected gem. The physicality of spreading out the Sunday paper, swapping sections and sipping a cup of coffee just does not translate to a laptop. Is this really the end, or can papers like The Courant rally, re-energize and bounce back? I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a rebirth.