Anna Quindlen Born in 1952,

Anna Quindlen

Born in 1952, Anna Quindlen is one of the most important American journalists of the 20th century, with important contributions as a reputable author and opinion columnist as well. As a journalist, she has worked for the New York Post in the beginning of her career and later spent 17 years, between 1977 and 1994, with the New York Times. An acclaimed columnist, she won the Pulitzer Price for Commentary in 1992 and was only the third woman in the newspaper's history to write a column for the Op-Ed page (Anna Quindlen - Biography).

Although she is now working as a full time novelist, she still writes for the "Last Column" in the Newsweek. As a novelist, she is the author of five best selling novels, the last written in 2006, and three of these were later made into movies, the most prestigious of them, One True Thing, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Meryl Streep's best actress role.

In order to get the best comparisons from Quindlen's work, it is best to compare two columns from Newsweek. The reason for this is that despite her success as a novelist, Quindlen's particular, journalistic style can best be grasped in the columns and journalist pieces that she writes. For example, in her column "Not Semi-Soldiers" (Newsweek, November 207), Anna Quindlen brings forth the argument of women's presence in battle and their role in combat.

The article betrays from the very first line Quindlen's long time experience in journalism and her capacity to tell the stories as convincingly as possible. Rather than launch immediately on a debate on whether official policies on women in war zones is fair or not or whether it is still unclear (although she hints that may be so), Quindlen starts her column by telling the story of a 23-year-old female soldier who was caught in a gunfire in Iraq in 2003 with her Kentucky National Guard and fought side by side in order to fight their way through.

The reason why the author presents this story is simple: as a journalist and a novelist, she is able to mix the narrative with her own point-of-view, the realistic and objective presentation of facts with her own conceptions of how things are, whether they are fair or not etc. From this point-of-view, she has an extraordinary capacity to describe facts and, at the same time, present her own strong opinions.

Her opinions are quite simple on this matter: today's environment should not limit women's participation in conflict and there should be a clear equality in this area as well. The reason for this are more than ethical, they are simply practical and relate to the fact that a woman should be able to defend herself in a battle zone (noting on the fact that there are unreasonable limitations on a woman's role in the offensive, prompting one of the female soldiers to ask why she can be fired at, but not fire back) and along to the fact that the array of conflicts is so vast nowadays that you simply have to use every possible force available.

Her feminist views on this matter are most likely determined by her own advance in a world that has long been judged as a world limited to a male presence: the world of journalism. Especially through the 1970s and early 1980s, it is likely that Quindlen felt that there were some limitations imposed on her journalistic activities. However, this was in no way an obstacle for her to climb to the top and become a reputable journalist with a Pulitzer Price won. This column probably reflects her own accession in the world of journalism and her own struggles as a female coping with a male dominated environment.

The same cutting-edge, analytic journalism style can also be seen in the column entitled "Killing the Consumer." The case that Anna Quindlen makes here is against the cigarettes producers, who are now targeting younger smokers in order to increase their revenues. Further more, they are now customizing their brands to fit particular categories of individuals, like young women, for example.

Quindlen's stance is again targeting females as the representative individuals for her articles. While on one hand, she is hitting quite hard against smoking and the cigarettes producers in general, she is particularly edgy against new brands designed to attract women as new smokers and against the way cigarettes manufacturers run ads with different magazines to promote their new products.

Quindlen's style is easily recognizable in this article as well, which follows a similar structure to the one previously presented. From the first introductory paragraph, you know where the article is heading and who the likely target is: the tobacco industry. Using a journalistic approach, Quindlen moves closer to her real subjects: the way that the tobacco industry sees to customize its brand so as to target certain categories of individuals, notably women, and the fact that magazines refuse to take cigarette commercials out of their editions.

The author impresses by the integrity that she proves in presenting the entire situation and she is not shunning away from targeting even the magazine that she works for, Newsweek. According to her, marketing and advertising deadly products should be incompatible with any magazine's objectives, despite any potential financial benefits that may exist.