The series follows a group of young female writers at the fictional
News of the Week magazine (representing the real
Newsweek of the non-fiction book
The Good Girls Revolt) beginning in 1969. Women in the newsroom ("The Pit") are relegated to low-level positions as researchers. Many researchers are more talented and better educated than their male colleagues, the reporters, and do original writing ("files") that the reporters later incorporate more-or-less directly into their stories, often without adaptation ("rewrite"), and always without attribution ("byline"). The researchers are also paid considerably less. These women have a sense that they're paid a lot less, and during the series it emerges just how much lower their pay is (about one-third of their colleague reporter's salary). But also at issue is the fact that their writing is not recognized; on a rare occasion when a female researcher's writing is openly accepted, such as when a male reporter quits just before a deadline, the researcher's story is nonetheless published as written by her, but under the departed reporter's byline only. ==Cast==