I listened to Duby McDowell, Janet Peckinpaugh, Carol Jenkins and Daniel Schwartz talk about Fox 61 reporter Shelly Sindland’s gender and age discrimination complaint a few minutes ago on John Dankosky’s WNPR  show Where We Live.

The program raised a number of interesting points, including the question of how thoroughly The Courant would be following the case.  I’m going to take a stab at answering that one, based on my 22 years there and my familiarity with the news staff. 

 My guess is that the newsroom will follow every major development, perhaps letting Matt Kauffman, one of the Courant’s best reporters, continue what he has already begun. Matt is never likely to pull a punch, nor is he likely to miss any imporant angles. He is extremely rational and measured, too.

On the other hand, I suspect there will be little or no blogging about the case from columnists, and no opining from the editorial board. I don’t know much about Fox 61, but would be shocked if they aired even a word on the subject, especially since the station’s main editor (not to mention the CEO) is named in the complaint. (And the subject may be too complicated for TV news.)

I’ll link to the podcast eventually, but in the meantime will observe that the panelists didn’t have time (or stomach) to dwell on some of the frat-boy comments that seem to indicate a sexist culture among the station’s top managers. I can’t think of any other way to categorize the “father of her baby” joke by the CEO or the “Big Boob Fridays” remark made at a company meeting. Is this an industry problem, or just something at Fox 61?

I don’t believe it is part of the culture at The Courant.