When a young man walked into Melanie Allen’s Journalism class at Moon Valley High School in Phoenix, Ariz., he immediately wanted join the newspaper’s staff. He liked what he saw: all 20 of her students were female.

The days of smoke-filled newsrooms dominated exclusively by males are gone. Almost.

Females typically made up 70-80 percent of the journalism classes represented by their teachers at this year’s ASNE Institute in Berkeley. As the gender imbalance becomes more pronounced in high schools, colleges, and – eventually – in professional newsrooms, journalism educators and professionals are trying to foresee the consequences of such a demographic shift.

“It’s an industry trend,” said Marcia Parker, director of the business reporting program at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Journalism, where 63 percent of the students are female.

Those figures are typical, according to the Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Enrollments conducted by the University of Georgia. In 2004, two out of three students enrolled in journalism and mass communication programs were women.

That percentage does not yet carry over into the workplace, where females make up only 37 percent of daily newspaper staffs. That number is slowly increasing, according to the survey, and it may change the makeup of national media staffs.

“It will continue to change,” predicted Parker, “and it will go a little faster.”

Men still dominate positions of power in newsrooms, occupying 65 percent of all supervision roles, according to the 2005 Media Report To Women, but if the current enrollment trends do continue, that number could change, too.

This presents a new kind of diversity issue, not only because it does not deal with race or ethnicity, but because activists have never needed to fight for more rights for men.

“Who has the guts to really argue for the males?” asked Don Bott, journalism adviser at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in Stockton, Calif.

Bott, who has advised the school newspaper for 14 years, looks forward to females holding more political power, but is concerned about young men feeling “totally useless.” While females have historically assumed the roles of nurturers in societies that reject them as professionals, he said, males might react more violently if they have no role.

“Men are going to get frustrated, and the very fact that they don’t communicate well means that they’ll manifest their frustration in some other way. A female might be able to express it verbally, while a male might hit someone or drink,” Bott said.

A newspaper with a solely female perspective could fuel that frustration.

“Perhaps the male perspective is not being portrayed enough in the pages of the paper, so the males don’t feel that the paper necessarily has to do with them,” said Dori Maynard, president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education, based in Oakland.

“People feel alienated when their perspective isn’t respected or even understood,” she warned.

In the professional media, more female editors will not necessarily cause male alienation. Parker, who was editorial director at AOL Time Warner, predicted “a broader array of coverage – family, community and diversity,” without compromising any other news.

In high schools, however, advisers may need to help their female editors. “Our female students are going to have to work extra hard to bring in and understand the male point of view without stereotyping,” said Maynard.