This is also a paper that is very alienated from its community. I remember, when I lived in Boston, people were proud of [Tom] Winship’s Globe, as people in D.C. were of [Ben] Bradlee’s Post. There is very little sense of community ownership of the Times. Quite the contrary, I keep hearing from people who say to me, you think women have it tough with these guys, wait ‘til you hear this. The bottom line to all these conversations ends up being, Can’t we find someone from Southern California to buy this paper and return it to the community? I think that may be the larger issue at play here — alienation and estrangement.

SQS: Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz has called this very public exchange of emails between you and Michael Kinsley a “spitball fight.” A blogger wrote that you both were exhibiting “a level of maturity roughly that of fourth graders.” You complain that Kinsley cancelled at least one dinner invitation, doesn’t call, doesn’t return emails. You launched a Web site and you’ve threatened to go to advertisers “or take other appropriate action” if your complaints aren’t resolved. You’ve even asked Kinsley if his Parkinson’s disease “may have affected your brain.” Kinsley, on the other hand, has accused you of blackmail and withdrawn an offer to publish a piece by you. He suggests that if you want to boycott media institutions that aren’t progressively feminist you resign from Fox News. Is this now a battle over an issue or one of egos?

SE: I don’t think we should be debating emails that were never intended, at least by me, to be public. Call them what you will, I would never make someone’s health an issue, and I really am sorry if anyone took it that way. People did ask questions. Most of us expected the paper to publish our letter [protesting the “Gender Studies” commentary], not turn it into a federal case. But that’s beside the point: There’s only one real issue here. I’ve been counting since I was a second-year law student — counting the numbers of women partners, counting CEO’s, counting women who make it to the top, and since 2000, counting women’s voices in the media. For four years now, my students at USC have been counting the number of women on the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, and the results are the only issue any of us should focus on. I got the tally from my students for the last week, since we raised the issue, and I think it illustrates the point: it’s 16-3 for this week, add Friday and Sunday, and we’re even worse, at 23-3, male to female. That’s the issue, not Michael or me, or dinner or emails. Twenty-three/three is not a reflection of our city, of who has something to say, it’s not a reflection of what a truly neutral and nondiscriminatory page should look like. It requires conscious non-discrimination to fix it, and the only way to make change happen, in my experience, is to get people’s attention. I always try, first, to work within the system. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. But if it doesn’t work, you put pressure on the system. I’ve spent my life fighting for equality, because it matters. And by the way, Fox News has a good record of promoting women to top positions, including Suzanne Scott, who is now number two in television, and a terrific and talented woman whom I am proud to work for.

SQS: Michael Kinsley says that you are right, that more women should be writing for the Times’ op-ed pages. Name some writers you’d like to see published there.

SE: What a dream. There are so many writers in L.A., many of them sometime screenwriters, which is an entire world I don’t know well, but here’s just a taste: Patt Morrison (twice a week), Barbara Howar, Joan Juliet Buck, Sandra Tsing Loh, Carol Leib, Carol Ann Leif, Tammy Bruce, Kimberle Crenshaw, Connie Rice, Vilma Martinez, Carrie Fisher, Arianna Huffington, Stephanie Miller, Aileen Adams. Anyway, that’s just [off] the top of my head.

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