I’ve been avoiding writing about the JAWS conference because I haven’t been able to reconcile my feelings about it.

I had high hopes for this conference. I was especially excited about the networking opportunities and the sense of community it promised. Being a relative newbie in Chicago, I miss my extended network in New York, where I practically trip over young, like-minded women journalists when I walk down the street. And the Journalism & Women Symposium has an amazing herstory—it was started 25 years ago by some of the most hard-hitting women in journalism, including a few of the women who took the New York Times to task for pay discrimination. It also has a fellowship for younger women to attend the conference for free (it was how I was able to go), which signaled to me that the organization genuinely cares about the fate of future women journalists.

When I arrived at the conference, I felt welcomed. The older women seemed intrigued and impressed by me, and we younger women (a lot more than I expected!) were excited to meet each other. It was definitely a relaxed environment for the most part, and you can’t beat the backdrop of the mountains in Utah—amazing!

But I have to be honest: I’m not sure I learned all that much. It partly had to do with the conference’s definition of journalism, which was traditional, to say the least. My offical job at Triblocal is being a reporter—the whowhatwhenwherewhy stuff—but the job that most defines me is my freelance writing, where I talk in my own voice about things that are important to me: women, feminism, sexual politics, youth culture, music, the list goes on. I have consciously rejected the idea that all journalism has to be “neutral”; I think it’s only natural that reported news should be supplemented with commentary and insight, not just facts. The importance of women in the media isn’t just ensuring they’re able to elbow their way into the boys’ club, that they’re able to survive in a man’s world. It’s also making sure that they help redefine the profession, that their voices are heard, because they inevitably bring to light a whole mess of issues that a men-only scene can’t.

When I told people what I wrote about, when I described Girldrive, I was met with interest and respect, but found few older allies. “Journalism,” at this conference, meant “hard news” and glossy magazines. Sure, the board made room for bloggers, but squeezed a discussion of them into one rushed panel which barely scratched the surface of the many functions of blogs in our media landscape. And what about cultural journalism, or autobiographical feature stories, or journalism as activism? I felt like most of the veteran journalists at the conference who’d been through it all had no idea what to do with me.

Out out 134 women, I only found a few who “got” me, most of whom were younger (fellows Beth Schwartzapfel and former fellow Katy June-Friesen come to mind), along with a select few older women (like Julia Kagan of Redbook and Celina Ottaway, who’s not even much older.) I felt a strange sense of defeat from much of the older generation, that they were both depending on us and scorning us at the same time. I was asked to speak on two panels. At first I was thrilled about this—I’m a fellow, and I get to speak twice?? Awesome! I was really impressed that JAWS were giving such a space to young women’s voices. But for every panel I spoke on, I missed another. And when I did go to other panels, I felt like I learned a lot more from the younger women than the older ones. Not that the previous generation didn’t have skills and experiences to share with us—on the contrary, many of them were fascinating women—it’s just that they often didn’t put it in a context that was relevant to us.

At the same time, I also felt a vibe of resentment toward the way we young women write and disseminate information. Sometimes the “vibe” was an outright diss, not toward us directly but to the way our generation thinks of media. On the blogger panel, on which I spoke, I had to almost literally grab the microphone back from an older woman on the panel in order to finish my thought. It was as if some veterans at the conference wanted to hear our ideas, but couldn’t bring themselves to accept them, either.

This was disheartening. Everyone knows that traditional journalism as we know it is in the shithouse, and I’m not a purist when it comes to new media—I’ve always thought of blogs and podcasts’ fate as enriching, not taking over, traditional journalism. Clearly there’s work to be done to find a sustainable economic model for online news and commentary. But all that being said, some skills will always be essential, while others can be passed on up from the younger generations. JAWS does have their heart in the right place, and I was happy that they renamed their mentoring sessions “symbiosis.” Still, I think it’s going to take some work before this dynamic truly takes shape and becomes productive.

I don’t mean to bite the hand that fed me. I am very grateful to have been at JAWS, especially since I think these conversations need to be had and confronted, rather than ignored in order to pretend that everyone’s one big happy family. I want to stress again that I felt a true exchange with several older women at JAWS, and you know who you are.

One thing is for damn sure, though—feminism, both young and old, is surely intact at JAWS. Nobody blinked an eye about identifying and engaging with feminism at the conference. And if some of the younger women didn’t use the word, they were at least intrigued by it, especially when we discussed it in the context of Girldrive. Emma’s and my experience with older feminism on our road trip couldn’t have been farther than the experience I had at JAWS–in fact, it really encouraged me about the potential for intergenerational exchange. Maybe feminism itself is essential to a journalistic symbiosis. Maybe it’s the key to ensuring the future of women in journalism—or at least could be a code word to propel these conversations forward.