It's Ladies Night at Salon! AKA, Ladies 24-Hour News Cycle: Yesterday they launched "Broadsheet" a blog for the ladies, by the ladies, and about the ladies (this reminds me of an excellent Demetri Martin joke: if you want to sound skeevy, just add "ladies" to any sentence). "Broadsheet" isn't meant to be exclusive per se; on the contrary, they acknowledge that "Broadsheet believes that any discussion of "women's issues" must include men -- hey, they still hold most of the power in the world, and, well, almost all of us live with them, work with them, love them."

Fair enough. But with excellent writers like Lynn Harris, Rebecca Traister, Katharine Mieszkowski and Farhad Manjoo (he loves the ladies! The ladies love him!) it begs the question of why the chix need their own blog in the first place. The general rule of blogs seems to be, if they're good, people will read them (or if they mention fish a lot, that helps too). So far, "Broadsheet" is off to a good start -- we liked "Girls on Plame" though it would have benefited from more analysis (and more girls; MoDo and Andrea Peyser are not the only women weighing in, and there are definite feminist issues to be explored here), and if we knew how to use our oven we'd be psyched to try out the recipe for Layered Ice Cream Cake. Plus we always appreciate a good Barbra Streisand tidbit, and give HUGE props for including the Harriet Miers' Blog on the blogroll. Still, it made me think of a recent Slate article on "Wine Adventures," the new wine magazine exclusively for women: "Is the wine world really so inhospitable to women that voluntary separation is necessary? Or is this just an example of niche marketing run amok?" I have no problem with a blog for the ladies, but I bet I'd still find much to chew over on this blog without the Lavalife-inspired graphic or the sudden switch from Salon's trademark red to just-for-gals pink.

Update: Salon is not alone in loving the ladies; last week's Newsweek had a cover story and special report on "How Women Lead" featuring 20 of "America's most powerful women" like covergirl Oprah Winfrey, Karen Hughes and Vera Wang (well, she certainly holds sway over brides-to-be, that's for sure). Newsweek also recently launched a women's health column called "Her Body" to run every other week (with entries so far on fighting low libido and staving off wrinkles).