Macho Media : THE GIRLS IN THE BALCONY; Women, Men and the New York Times, <i> By Nan Robertson, (Random House: $22; 274 pp.)</i>

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has been in journalism that while news organizations are quick to lecture other businesses to observe women’s rights, they themselves have been woeful laggards in the cause.

Perhaps the most disappointing case is that of the New York Times, which for years was--some would argue still is--the most sacred precinct of journalism. We learn from “The Girls in the Balcony” that it is also a place where, throughout most of its history, discrimination against women was institutionalized, and the humiliation of women reporters--including some of the most recognizable bylines in the country--was accepted as commonplace.

“The Girls in the Balcony” is a compelling insider’s view of the class-action lawsuit brought in the 1970s by women employees against the New York Times. But Nan Robertson’s devastating analysis of discrimination at that newspaper--and in journalism in general--raises profound questions about ingrained sexism in the profession.

What is significant about this book is that its testimony comes from formidable journalists--Robertson herself is a Pulitzer Prize-winner and former New York Times Washington correspondent--and therefore cannot be dismissed as merely the railings of shrill females. Robertson reports:

* Eileen Shanahan, before becoming Washington economics reporter for the New York Times, was asked by a man at CBS Radio, “What on earth makes you think I’d hire a woman?” Willard Kiplinger, founder of the Kiplinger newsletter, implied that she would have to grant sexual favors to get inside information from sources, and that he would not hire such a woman. A Washington Post editor told her that an economics story with a woman’s byline wouldn’t be credible.

* Kathleen Teltsch, sent to the N.Y. Times United Nations bureau in 1946 when she was 23, became an outstanding reporter, but she watched as man after man was appointed to head the bureau. After 31 years, in 1977 when she was 54, she became bureau chief.

* Anne McCormick became a stringer for the New York Times in 1921, and over the years became world- renowned for her interviews with Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt and other world leaders. But she could not get hired as a staff member because publisher Adolph Ochs would not hire a woman. (Robertson refers to Ochs’ 40-year publishing reign as the “Dark Ages” for women. Former excutive editor Abe Rosenthal rates barely higher.) A year after Ochs’ death, his son-in-law and successor, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, named McCormick to the staff; the following year she won a Pulitzer Prize.

Robertson was hired in 1955 to work as a six-week temporary reporter in the New York Times’ women’s department. Robertson knocks the institution off its pedestal by revealing what she calls the newspaper’s “dirty little secret”: Fashion writers were required to produce stories on retailers at lengths proportionate to the inches of advertising they bought. The practice was monitored by the paper’s advertising director--a blurring of the line between advertising and editorial, verboten on the news side, and illustrative of the contempt that the paper’s management must have had for women’s news.

Robertson finally transferred to the city room in 1959 and in 1963 went to the Washington bureau. She draws her book’s title from the balcony at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., long a symbol of women’s status as second-class reporters. The Press Club sees a constant parade of heads of state whose luncheon speeches become the basis of the next day’s news reports. Women were not admitted as members of the club until just over 20 years ago, and until 1955, they were banned from the building altogether, which meant, in effect, that they were often unable to report the most important story of the day.

In 1955, after much protest by female Washington journalists, they were permitted inside. But instead of being allowed into the ballroom where lunches were held, the women were crowded into the balcony, where they couldn’t eat, often couldn’t sit down and, most important, couldn’t ask questions.

The outrage is best described by Bonnie Angelo, then Newsday bureau chief, who told Robertson:

“I remember being in that damned balcony crowded up against Pulitzer Prize-winners. . . . I stood and looked down at all those lobbyists and patent lawyers and doctors and dentists--the male reporters loved bringing their doctors and dentists to hear the bigwigs, and the patent lawyers had their offices in the building--sitting there on the ballroom floor and luxuriating over their crummy National Press Club apple pie. . . . We could not ask questions of the speakers. . . . When the speakers left with their security guards, there was no way to gather around them like the men on the floor did to shoot questions at them. . . It was so hot in that balcony. . . . It was hard to hear, it was hard to see. . . . And all the time you were really boiling inside. You entered and left through a back door and you’d be glowered at as you went through the club quarters. It was discrimination at its rawest.”

Robertson defied the second-class treatment imposed by the National Press Club when she joined colleagues Shanahan and Maggie Hunter in refusing to ever go there again to cover an event. Washington bureau chief James (Scotty) Reston did not seem to understand what was bothering them, Robertson writes. Not surprising from someone who thought nothing of inviting male reporters to the exclusively male Metropolitan Club, and even arranged a lunch there--without the women reporters--for Arthur (Punch) Sulzberger Sr. when he became publisher in 1963.

It was against this history--and in the midst of the burgeoning women’s movement--that the Women’s Caucus formed at the New York Times in 1972. Its first major order of business was to send to publisher Sulzberger, his three sisters and mother--all directors of the New York Times Co.--a five-page letter declaring that the New York Times “was and always had been negligent about putting women in vital, decision-making jobs.”

Among a long list of “offenses”: There were no women vice presidents and not one woman on the masthead; two of the top three women in editorial positions were in jobs traditionally held by women (the third was Betsy Wade, highly respected head of the foreign-news desk--and head of the Women’s Caucus). Of 425 reporters, 40 were women (11 of them in the family/style section); only three of 33 foreign correspondents were women and not one national correspondent among 22; and only three of 35 reporters in the Washington bureau. There were no women photographers, and only four out of 31 cultural critics; no women on the 11-member editorial board, no women columnists and only four women out of 75 copy editors.

In 1973, 84 women, from writers to secretaries, filed discrimination charges with government agencies. This led to a spate of hiring women (at lower wages than men, Robertson points out), but other grievances including salary inequities were ignored. On Nov. 7, 1974, six women brought suit against the newspaper in New York federal court (a seventh, Shanahan, later joined), including three women from editorial and an accountant who had trained at least six men who went on to become her boss.

Four years of discovery and deposition-taking followed, revealing some huge salary discrepancies and damaging private memos. Written to a London bureau staffer who recommended an applicant: “Perhaps you ought to send over her vital statistics, or picture in a bikini?” An executive reviewing a woman’s work performance wrote: “Has a good figure and is not restrained about dressing it to advantage.” A woman mail clerk’s progress review contained positive comments, and the conclusion: “I would make her my first assistant if she were a man.”

In 1977, a federal judge approved the suit as a class action based on evidence of systematic discrimination.Just before the trial, publisher Sulzberger, seeing how damaging a public trial would be, ordered the newspaper’s lawyers to settle. They did, on Oct. 6, 1978, agreeing to pay a nominal sum and to adopt a new affirmative-action plan.

Management did make efforts to change. Robertson reports that on the salary issue, in 1987, the average salary of men in news hired within the previous five years was $13,000 higher than for women hired in the same period, but by 1990, there was no gap; in 1987, the gap was $25,000 for men in the business division with 6-10 years of experience, but by 1990, the gap between average starting salaries of men and women narrowed to $7,000. There were more women in top positions in editorial, and the percentages of women in all departments had increased dramatically from pre-lawsuit days.

Still, there are only three women out of 23 on the masthead today.

The story ends at a 10-year-anniversary party marking the settlement. Six of the seven plaintiffs, all of whose careers stalled after the suit, were there. (The Women’s Caucus leader, Betsy Wade, was then, and is still, writing a weekly travel column.) But there were 19 speakers that night, all women in influential positions. “They knew why they were there . . . and because of whom,” Robertson writes.

What is most provocative about this book is that the problems it highlights are not exceptional to the New York Times but continue throughout the media industry. In the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which includes editors generally at the assistant-managing-editor level and above, there are only 89 women out of 930 members: fewer than 10%. There are few women on the mastheads of major American newspapers.

At a time when newspaper editors are struggling to define the future of their industry, it would seem wise to diversify their work forces to reflect the communities they serve, and make room for different perspectives. The wisdom of this notion has been grasped by the male hero of Robertson’s tale, assistant managing editor David Jones. In his view, Robertson writes, women “have added a real diversity and sensitivity to the daily report. . . Whereas some men on the national staff tended to pass over and downplay such subjects as birth control or toxic shock, the women would say, ‘Wait a minute--this is a hell of a story.’ ”

BOOKMARK: For an excerpt from “The Girls in the Balcony,” see the Opinion section, Page 6.