Jessica Bennett (journalist)

Jessica Bennett (born 1981) is a journalist who writes on gender, sexuality and culture. She is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a former columnist at Time. She is the author of Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace.

Personal background

Bennett grew up in Seattle, Washington, where she attended Garfield High School. She received a B.S. from Boston University, where she was a student reporter covering crime at The Boston Globe. She moved to New York City after college to become a research assistant to investigative reporter Wayne Barrett.

Career

Bennett began her career at Newsweek, where she spent seven years as a staff writer and editor. She wrote a controversial cover story about the magazine's long history of sexism, framed around the story of 46 female staffers who sued the company for gender discrimination in the 1970s, paving the way for female journalists. That story is the subject of a book, The Good Girls Revolt, by Lynn Povich and a new Amazon television series by the same name. Bennett left Newsweek to become the executive editor of Tumblr and later a contributing editor to Sheryl Sandberg's women's nonprofit, LeanIn.org, where she co-founded and curates the Lean In Collection with Getty Images, a photo initiative to change the depiction of women in stock photography.

Bennett has written on millennials and marriage, feminism, stay-at-home dads, gay rights, pot policy, school bullying and writes a monthly column for the New York Times style section called Command Z, which takes on communication in the modern age. She has profiled Monica Lewinsky, Paula Broadwell and wrote a piece on resting bitch face.

She also covered the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal, the bully suicide of Phoebe Prince, and won a NY Press Club award for the story on the Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy, a young woman killed in a car accident whose death photos went viral after being leaked by the Highway Patrol.

Bennett's first book, Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace, was published by HarperCollins in September 2016.

Awards and honors

Bennett has received the Newswomen's Club of New York's 2011 Front Page Award in the category of "Online—Multimedia" for her work on "The Beauty Advantage" in Newsweek; a 2009 GLAAD Media Award in the category of "Outstanding Digital Journalism—Multimedia for "Is Gay the New Black?" in Newsweek; and a 2011 New York Press Club Journalism Award in the category of "Outstanding Web Coverage" for "Welcome to Potopia" in Newsweek.