In the New York Times, Amisha PDF

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Prof. Penny Mamais...

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In the New York Times, Amisha Padnani, a digital editor, covers the article “How an Obits Project on Overlooked Women Was Born”, which is dated March 8, 2018. Amisha Padnani, who is currently working for the New York Times as a journalist on the obituaries desk, tries to uncover the important story of a very famous novelist, Nella Larsen, who has contributed to the society by giving inspirational and meaningful messages about the black middle-class families and the debilitating pressures of race through her dramatic novels. If I were a journalist, I would also have the same opinion as that of Amisha Padnani, and to be honest, the message that is being conveyed over here is the fact. There are a lot of important stories that needs to be revealed, but most of the times, these stories go untold and the truth remains to be hidden, just like any of those unopened crime cases that goes off the shelves after a specific period. In this case, the most powerful stories of incredible women and minorities are not brought to light and these lost tales are the concept behind ‘Overlooked,’ which is a history project recalling the lives of those who, or for whatever reason, were left out of The Times’s obit pages. What I really like about this article is that, the author takes up the initiative to bring to light the important stories of women that were untold, and as journalist she ensures that these stories don’t get uncovered and to get more insights about the hidden facts she starts developing ideas and becomes part of a national debate where renewed discussions on gender equality begins to take hold and people start coming out to share their personal experiences of injustice and discrimination that they had encountered in their lives. By sharing these stories, the victims are inspiring the others to come out of the shadows and tell the world about the injustice or discrimination they have experienced. Yes, this article is relevant in today’s culture because the author is doing good to the society by reflecting on the lives of all those women who have contributed in some or the other way through their creativity. There are a lot of women who have personally contributed excellent works through their poems, novels, writings, sports, and Olympics but are never really recognized for their achievements, in fact, they are not even given

any obits for their contributions to the society. I personally feel that women who have succeeded in their lives by making marvelous contributions to the society should be rewarded for the same. The world indeed, has the right to know who is responsible for the progression of our country. The women of our country are responsible for the worlds advancement because they have a big hand in contributing marvelous works that has proved to be fruitful to the society. Listening to the stories of victims, inspired Amisha to start conducting research on women who had received obituaries for their marvelous contributions made to the society and here she discovered the story of Mary Ewing Outerbridge, the first woman to introduce tennis to America, who died in 1886, but had never received a Times obituary for her contribution. According to Amisha, those who didn’t receive obits were women and people of color. To get more insight, she started talking about her research with colleagues, friends and relatives, and to her surprise they began sending her more names. Interestingly, after conducting so many researches she finally had a list of dozens of fascinating people such as Ms. Larsen, Madhubala, a Bollywood actress, Margaret Abbott, a famous golfer and the first American woman to win an Olympic championship, the poet Sylvia Plath, the writer Charlotte Bronte and the photographer Diane Arbus who were the other women that were never for an obit. These were the famous women whose achievements were unrecognized by the world and this indeed is very disappointing. By November 2017, Amisha Padnani met Jessica Bennett, The Times’s first gender editor. She agreed that Overlooked was a compelling way to add to the record, and hence, they decided to partner up. Joining them were the writers, editors, international correspondents, page designers, photo editors, who were keen into participating and contributed to help in digging up the uncovered stories of the famous women. Through various researches, the author found out quite a lot about women who never received any obits for their excellent works and this indeed, was the right decision made by her because through this detailed research the world got the opportunity to discover

who really fought for gender equality, injustice and discrimination and also got to learn who was the famous novelist, poet, writer, American woman to introduce tennis to America and also about the American woman who won Olympic championship. Thus, this article has proved to be useful to me....