Month: September 2011

Gender Check 9/14/11 – Northeast

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*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: The New York Times

On The New York Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Sept. 14 was titled “There’s an Exciting Clash on the Field. Oh, That’s the Uniform.” Its subject was the growing trend of fashion-forward uniforms in college football.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author:  Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male – ESPN reporter
  2. Male – Under Armour senior vice president
  3. Male – spokesman for University of Maryland
  4. Male – director of football for Adidas

Website: ProPublica

On ProPublica, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9 p.m. EST on Wednesday, September 14 was titled “What’s Gov. Perry’s Drug Controversy All About?.” Its subject was

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned)

  1. Male – governor and republican presidential candidate

Notes/Analysis: Most of the information for this story came from public statements or prior material compiled on Gov. Perry.

Gender check: 9/13/11 – West

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: Seattle Times

“We’re conserving, but water rates may climb” – Seattle Times 9/13/2011

On the Seattle Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9 a.m. (PDT) Tuesday, Sept. 13, was titled “We’re conserving, but water rates may climb.” Its subject was water rates.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male, consultant
  2. Male, city council’s utilities committee chairman
  3. Male, analyst
  4. Male, chamber of commerce vice president for government relations
  5. Male, member of water system advisory committee
  6. Male, director
  7. Male, city council president
  8. Male, manager of watershed education center
  9. Male, senior civil engineer on the project

Notes/analysis: Four photos are included with the article. All by male photographers. No visible women.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9 a.m. (PDT) Tuesday, Sept. 13, was titled “A Jersey guy’s love for the Olympics.” Its subject was Bill Bradley’s role in a dam removal project to reopen part of Olympic National Park to spawning salmon.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male, former U.S. senator (subject)
  2. Male, late Alaska governor

Gender Check 9/12/11 – South

Joy BaconLeave a comment

Website: The Miami Herald

On the Miami Herald, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 10 p.m. (EST) on Monday, Sept. 12 was a live blog of an NFL game. Its subject was the Miami Dolphins vs. the New England Patriots as the game progressed.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources (listed in order mentioned):

None

Website: Patch (Seminole Heights)

On Patch of Seminole Heights, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 10 p.m. (EST) on Monday, September 12 was titled “Tampa Remembers 9/11.” Its subject was the city’s memorial for the anniversary of the attacks.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources (listed in order mentioned)

None

Notes/Analysis: The photograph that accompanied this story featured 5 military members, all male, with their heads bowed and backs turned to the camera.

CNN documentary to feature women of 9/11

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Countless special reports related to 9/11 have been released thus far leading up to Sunday’s 10-year anniversary, including The New York Times’ “The Reckoning.” One project, however, places special emphasis on the women – “Beyond Bravery: The Women of 9/11“by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.

In the Reporter’s Notebook for the piece, O’Brien states that the documentary aims to address the question of a little boy during a visit of a female firefighter from 9/11 to his classroom: He asked her “how she could be a ‘fireman’ if she was a girl.” The documentary aims to tell the stories of 9/11’s women and give voice to their heroism and their challenges.

The project includes a look at the book “Women At Ground Zero” written by Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba. Here’s a sample segment from the documentary:

The documentary is set to air at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Sept. 11. More sample segments can be viewed along with the reporter’s notebook and a link to an educator and parent guide here.

In addition to this documentary on CNN, a number of other news outlets have provided stories about women’s experiences including the following:

Did you find other 9/11 coverage of women? Share your findings in the comment section below.

In other news

The New York Times‘ first female executive editor, Jill Abramson, stepped into the position on Tuesday. Several posts related to the beginning of her tenure as editor circled the web, including a memo announcing her leadership team.

Abramson herself sent out a tweet Tuesday regarding her new role:

The announcement that Abramson would succeed Bill Keller came in June, making her the first woman to hold that title in the paper’s 160-year history. Read our post following that announcement here.

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Lowest percentage of female authors yet in August’s New Media Index count

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

August’s look at articles in the New Media Index produced an eight-month low in female bylines and one of the lowest percentages of female sources. Time will tell whether these numbers are related to a change in the methodology for determining the top five most discussed and linked to articles on the web.

Here at The Gender Report, we’ve been monitoring the web’s top articles based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups since January. These posts chronicle the top five news stories and opinion pieces around the web in a Monday to Friday week based on commentary on blogs and social media sites. We’ve chosen to focus on the top five in the blogosphere.

Aug. 1 marked some changes to the New Media Index report. PEJ updated its methodology to use more sites to track the top stories and began using a larger sample size and range of sources. (Read more about those change and the process here.)

For the purpose of our study, this has meant changes in the sources of links. During the first seven months of the year, the majority of links provided mostly came from the LA Times, Washington Post and in less frequency the BBC, and were mostly news articles with some opinion pieces (in other words, almost exclusively traditional media sources). This month we’ve noticed more diversity in the link sources, including from blogs and company’s direct postings.

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 mentioned that two articles shared the attention for that particular subject. This happened in higher volumes this month, resulting in a larger sample of articles overall.

In July, we released our findings from the first six months of monitoring. In that time, women were 20.2 percent of sources and had 31.3 percent of bylines (of articles by a person or several of one gender or the other, not including shared bylines between a woman and a man).

Here’s what we found specifically in the past month:

August 2011

PEJ New Media Index: August 1-5, 2011

Between Aug. 1 and Sept. 2, the New Media Index included 33 articles that could be checked. Reoccurring topics included the 2012 presidential campaign and the new iPhone — both appeared in the top five in four out of the five weeks. More than one link was included for nine topics. One link related to the iPhone in week four was no longer functioning and no link was provided for the No. 3 story of Google buying Motorola in week three.

Here’s what we found:

  • Women were 14.1 percent of sources in this month’s articles. The articles contained 67 male sources and only 11 female sources. This is the second lowest female source total we’ve seen. The low thus far came in May with women at 13.3 percent.
  • Most shockingly 18 out of the 33 linked to articles contained no human sources at all (though one or two did reference a company or an unnamed and unidentified official). Nearly all of those links were to posts or reviews as opposed to traditional news articles. In addition, eight articles featured only male sources.
  • Only three articles or posts were written or produced by a woman while 27 articles were by men. That means women wrote only 10 percent of articles or posts by authors of one gender or the other. Two were uncredited and one was by staff. That percentage of female authors fell below our previous low of 11.1 percent in May.

We’ll be keeping an eye on these findings in the coming months to see if we deduce other trends emerging now that the methodology for the top five articles has changed. For past months’ findings as well as other statistics on gender and the online news, visit our findings and statistics page or view our six-month recap of all of our projects and studies here.