As we mark International Women's Day 2009, women throughout the world are leveraging their power as leaders in journalism, and paving the way for a future where girls feel empowered to join the profession.   

But with progress comes a host of challenges, including that of balancing community and family life with the demands of a stressful and time consuming profession.

Calling for an end to sensational reporting in Indian media, a government official in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka recently proposed the idea of a government-appointed "ombudsman" to regulate media in that region.

But after receiving harsh criticism from opponents, including some who called the proposal a "fascist move" intended to prevent the media from reporting freely and fairly, the proposal was retracted last week, according to the Times of India and IndianExpress.com.

In today's digital news environment, independent Internet journalists - who often lack legal support or political connections - are often more vulnerable than those who work for news organizations.

According to a census of imprisoned journalists conducted recently by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), more Internet journalists are jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium.

Each year, journalists across the globe join associations and organizations that offer members benefits including legal and professional support, professional training opportunities, the chance to network with other journalists and more.

While some journalist organizations successfully promote and protect the role of journalists in society, others have faced hurdles due to governments' unease with press freedom and transparency.

Though governments are often to blame for controlling the media, censorship can come from a variety of societal culprits.

In many regions of the world, a journalist's personal background and place in society has a profound effect on what he/she feels comfortable publicly reporting.

On October 3rd, the U.S.-based Washington Post newspaper reported that the U.S. Defense Department "will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to 'engage and inspire' the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.”

I recently came across this interesting article on Indian media's obsession with crime, celebrities, and other social issues, as discussed at a recent seminar organized by the BBC World Service and the Mass Communication Research Center at Jamia Millia Islamia University.

The article highlights some of the issues currently facing the media in India, including a lack of rural coverage, commercial driven reporting, and widening demographic divides perpetuated by the media.

Last week, more than 15,000 journalists from around the world traveled to the U.S. city of Denver, Colorado, to cover the four-day U.S. Democratic National Convention.

In an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, managing Web editor Justin Peters criticized the media for dispatching so many reporters to Denver, suggesting only a small number of journalists did essential reporting.

For the past two decades, British news editors have been puzzled by the lagging number of women reading daily newspapers – measured at 41% of women in the period October 2007 to March 2008, according to Editors Weblog. A few years ago, Peter Preston of the Guardian newspaper asked, "Where have all the women gone?"