Female News Professionals in Local and National Broadcast News During the Buildup to the Iraq War Cory L. Armstrong, Michelle L. M. Wood, and Michelle R. Nelson This study examines gender representation of news professionals within broadcast news. Using a gender model, the development of female news professionals is examined by looking at their relative representation across local and national news according to story length and type. Results show that the proportion of females is higher in local news segments of both “hard” (including war) and “soft” news than within national news segments. Further, an interaction be- tween perceived age of the newscaster and story length suggests that younger women are seen more often in shorter news segments than more seasoned female newscasters. The years of 2004 and 2005 brought major changes to the network television news landscape. Longtime NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw gave way to Brian Williams, ABC’s Peter Jennings succumbed to lung cancer, and CBS newsman Dan Rather re- signed amid controversy. Although the presence of women is increasing, it still has not ascended into the national anchor’s chair (Gibbons, 2002; Sanders, 1992), al- though Katie Couric is expected to assume CBS’s anchor post this fall. She would be the first-ever solo female anchor on network news. Despite the fact that roughly 65% of bachelor’s degrees conferred in journalism were awarded to women in 2003, which has more than doubled from the 30% awarded in 1970 (Becker, Vlad, Huh, & Mace, 2003), little progress has been made in the newsroom. For example, in the early 1990s, only 33% of the journalism workforce was made up of women, and upper management of corporate media was predominantly male (Duckforth, Lodder, Moore, Overton, & Rubin, 1990). In © 2006 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 50(1), 2006, pp. 78–94 78 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/March 2006 Cory L. Armstrong (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison) is an Assistant Professor in the College of Jour- nalism and Communications at the University of Florida. Her research interests include gender representa- tions and influences on news content. Michelle L. M. Wood (M.A., University of Wisconsin–Madison) is a doctoral candidate in the School of Jour- nalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests include per- suasion and public relations/marketing communication. Michelle R. Nelson (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests in- clude persuasion and consumer culture.