WHO WE ARE
The Riveter is a magazine that celebrates narratives and longform journalism by women. We are dedicated to exposing the power of women as storytellers, because we noticed a void in the representation of female longform journalists.
THE RIVETER IS JUST THE BEGINNING
By Joana Demkiewicz & Kaylen Ralph
The Riveter was founded in 2013 by two journalism students who noticed gender disparities in magazine journalism, as well as an overall cultural bias against women’s media.
Kaylen Ralph and Joanna Demkiewicz launched The Riveter while attending the University of Missouri School of Journalism after being exasperated by the 2012 American Society of Magazine Editors’ failure to nominate a single female in any major magazine category, and disappointed by a Journalism School-sponsored event—its goal to showcase the next wave of great contemporary journalists—and the featured anthology, which tipped almost exclusively male. The event also only featured men on the panel—journalists who were supposed to be exemplary to every journalism student in attendance, despite gender, race, sexuality, etc.
The Journalism School was an ideal space to launch this type of publication, since most print journalism students in writing classes were female, and yet, statistics showed that they would not fare as well as their male counterparts in the professional world. Through their questions about gender parity in journalism, Ralph and Demkiewicz discovered VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, a research organization that publishes annual statistics based on gender byline breakdowns. VIDA was an invaluable resource in creating The Riveter, and it continues to be an important tool, as the organization broadens its research to include a count of women of color in media.
In addition to providing a platform for women to publish their work, The Riveter serves as an example of what women’s media should look like: thoughtful, dynamic, and complex. Ralph and Demkiewicz founded the magazine to allow multi-dimensional stories to live alongside conversations of lifestyle, because they believe women’s storytelling is much more diverse than what traditional women’s magazines allow (think Beauty, Fashion, Dating, and Health). That being said, The Riveter also challenges the notion that the aforementioned topics or categories are less valuable than more mainstream topics (think Sports, War, and Politics).
In short, The Riveter publishes stories that can’t be summed up in a sell line, because Ralph and Demkiewicz believe that women as writers and readers deserve more from media.