The Gender Report

The number of female authors and sources in the top articles in the blogosphere climbed again in June after a low showing in May.

Here at the Gender Report we’ve been monitoring the top articles based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups, which chronicle the top five linked to and discussed news stories and opinion pieces around the web in a Monday to Friday week based on commentary on blogs and social media sites. We focus on the main top five in the blogosphere. When more than one link was provided on the topic, we’ve monitored the first mentioned or the one that appears based on the writing to be more dominant, unless it is specifically mentioned that two articles shared the attention for that particular subject.

In May, we saw a new low with women as only 13.3 percent of sources and even fewer authors in the 12 articles that could be monitored that month. Women were more present in June’s count, particularly among bylines. Here’s what we found:

June 2011

Between May 30 and July 1, the New Media Index included 29 articles could be checked — more than double the amount from last month. For five topics this month, two articles shared the attention, contributing to the higher overall article count. Only one story did not have a link provided this month — Obama’s Afghanistan plan — when instead a special report was done.

Here’s what was uncovered:

• Women were 20.2 percent of sources in this month’s articles. The articles contained 83 male sources and 21 female sources.
• This month 16 articles were written or produced by a man and nine articles were written by a woman (or in one case, two). Three were by both a man or two and a woman and one was not bylined.
• Like last month, two top linked-to articles in blogs were opinion pieces. Both were by male authors.

Again, links this month predominately came from the LA Times, with a few for the BBC and individual articles from four other news sources.

For past months’ findings as well as other findings on gender and the online news, visit our findings and statistics page.

Coming soon: Check back on The Gender Report for a look at the overall findings from the first six months of our monitoring of the New Media Index articles.