The Male Echo Chamber of Political Twitter

In 1992, Nan Robertson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The New York Times, published The Girls in the Balcony, a book about the myriad ways in which women journalists at the Times were marginalized during the 1970s. The book’s title was no metaphor. It referenced the cramped balcony of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to which women reporters were relegated while presidents addressed their male colleagues in the ballroom below. It was also likely a rejoinder to Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus, whose very title enshrined the male dominance of 1970s political reporting.

In some ways, Robertson’s book became part of its own narrative. Despite glowing reviews, it is far less famous than Crouse’s tome, even to people in journalism circles. , who wrote an entire book about, didn’t hear about it until recently. “I was shocked that I didn’t know about it,” she told me.