Year: 2011

Gender check: 6/30/11 – Midwest

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: St. Louis Post-Dispatch(stltoday.com)

Stltoday.com, 6/30/2011

On Stltoday.com, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 8:45 a.m. (PST) Thursday, June 30, was titled “Former Brentwood official admits stealing $30,000 for gambling.” Its subject was a former city administrator admits to embezzling.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male, mayor
  2. Males (2), defense lawyers (together said)
  3. Male, former city administrator, suspect

Website: St. Louis Beacon

St. Louis Beacon, 6/30/11

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 8:45 a.m. (PST) June 30, was titled “In Morehouse, people are recovering from flood, one step at a time.” Its subject was a look at how the people of one community are dealing with the after-effects of flooding.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Female, resident
  2. Male, mayor
  3. Male, resident
  4. Male, FEMA spokesperson
  5. Female, Hoopa group (helping)
  6. Male, reverend
  7. Female, resident

Notes/analysis: The article also contains a photo slideshow. Those images with human figures feature a single person. There were five with males (two of the mayor) and four with females.

Gender Check 6/29/11 – 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 2:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday, June 29 was titled “France Admits to Arming Libyan Rebels.” Its subject was the recent announcement of the NATO’s country involvement with the rebel forces in the ongoing conflict.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Authors: Male and Female (shared by-line)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male – French military spokesman
  2. Male – Colonel

Notes/analysis: Much of this story’s information came from previous reporting from French news outlet Le Figaro.

Website: ProPublica

ProPublica, 6/29/2011

On ProPublica, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2:30 p.m. EST

on Wednesday, June 29 was titled “The Hardest Cases: When Children Die, Justice Can Be Elusive.” Its subject was the criminal justice process for murder cases involving children. The story was a collaboration with NPR and PBS’ Frontline.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Authors: Male and Female (shared by-line)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Female – medical examiner
  2. Male – pathologist
  3. Male – convict
  4. Unknown- 9-1-1 operator
  5. Female – forensic pathologist (as quoted from a published report)
  6. Male – medical examiner
  7. Male – judge
  8. Male – friend of convict
  9. Female – office manager (as quoted from court documents)
  10. Male – pathologist
  11. Male – doctor (as quoted from court documents)
  12. Female – nurse (as quoted from court documents)
  13. Female – convict’s wife (as quoted from court documents)
  14. Female – victim’s mother (as quoted from court documents)
  15. Male – assistant district attorney (as quoted from court documents)
  16. Female – lawyer
  17. Male – professor (as quoted from court documents)
  18. Male – pathologist (as quoted from court documents)
  19. Male – doctor
  20. Male – doctor
  21. Female – convict
  22. Female – therapist (as quoted from court documents)
  23. Male – judge (as quoted from court documents)
  24. Male – district attorney
  25. Female – convict

Notes/analysis: This story used mostly legal documents, filings and past reporting for its information. Many of the sources quotes in this manner explicitly declined interviews for the story.

Gender Checks show higher count of female bylines in fourth month, fewer female sources in fifth

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Though the fact that we missed some Gender Checks in the fourth and fifth months of this project may have slightly altered our results, overall between the two months women represented 25.7 percent of sources and 44.8 percent of bylines in the articles we monitored.

The percent of female authors in particular is significantly higher than what we found in our first three months of Gender Checks. During that time, women were 31 percent of authors. This difference is largely attributed to our fourth month (see findings below) in which for the first time in this study the number of female authors outnumbered the amount of males. That result may have been due to the fact that we missed several Gender Checks from the Northeast that month, and, of our four regions, it tends (at least as an average of our first three months) to return the lowest percentage of female bylines.

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites from that region — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. In doing so, we pulled the top articles on their websites at the time of the check and gathered information on the gender of the author and the breakdown of the genders of the human sources referenced in the articles among other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Here’s more detail on our findings of both sourcing and authorship from the two months broken down by geographic region and news site association:

Fourth Month: April 19 – May 20, 2011

We reviewed 32 articles, two in each Gender Check. This month we had five Gender Checks from the Midwest and South, four from the West and only two from the Northeast.

Sourcing

The articles contained 71 male sources and 31 female sources, which put women at about 30.4 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This does not include sources whose gender was not identifiable.

Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 13 males, 6 female (Women at 31.6 percent)
  • Northeast: 15 males, 6 females (Women at 28.6 percent)
  • Midwest: 20 males, 13 females (Women at 39.4 percent)
  • South: 23 male, 6 female (Women at 20.7 percent)

And, here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 41 males, 15 females (Women at 26.8 percent)
  • Online-only:  30 males, 16 females (Women at 34.8 percent)

Authorship

Overall, 16 articles were written by an individual woman and 12 by one or more man, which meant for the first time in this study there were more female than male authors. All geographic areas were fairly evenly split. As stated earlier in this post, this may not have been the case if we had completed an equal number of Gender Checks in the Northeast this month, as it has shown to have the lowest percentage of female bylines thus far in our study. In addition, four articles had a shared byline with a man and a woman.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 5 by an individual woman, 3 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 2 by a woman, 2 by a man
  • Midwest: 4 by a woman, 2 by a man, 4 by a man and a woman
  • South: 5 by a woman, 5 by a man

And, here’s the look by news website association:

  • Newspaper website: 9 by a woman, 5 by a man, 2 by a man and a woman
  • Online-only: 7 by a woman, 7 by a man, 2 by a man and a woman

Fifth Month: May 24 – June 24, 2011

We reviewed 30 articles, two in each Gender Check. This month that included five Gender Checks from the West and Midwest, four in the Northeast and only one in the South. Keep in mind that the lack of Gender Checks from the South may have changed slightly our results overall. In the first quarter, the South had slightly higher percentages of women authors and sources than the other geographic regions.

Sourcing

The articles contained 62 male sources and 15 female sources, which put women at about 19.5 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This does not include sources whose gender was not identifiable (particularly unnamed sources with no pronoun modifiers, which we saw more often this month).

The Northeast and Midwest performed particularly poorly for women this month. Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 18 males, 7 female (Women at 28 percent)
  • Northeast: 19 males, 2 females (Women at 9.5 percent)
  • Midwest: 20 males, 3 females (Women at 13 percent)
  • South: 5 male, 3 female (Women at 37.5 percent)

And, here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 37 males, 11 females (Women at 22.9 percent)
  • Online-only:  25 males, 4 females (Women at 13.9 percent)

Authorship

Overall, 10 articles were written by an individual woman and 20 by one or more man, which meant women were 33.3 percent of authors this month. There were no shared bylines.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 2 stories by an individual woman, 8 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 4 by a woman, 4 by a man
  • Midwest: 3 by a woman, 7 by a man
  • South: 1 by a woman, 1 by a man

For authorship, the number of female bylines newspaper sites and online-only sites matched this month. Here’s the look of what that meant in numbers:

  • Newspaper website: 5 by a woman, 10 by a man
  • Online-only: 5 by a woman, 10 by a man

A reminder for our readers: These results reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites (and in some cases, as in these past two months, not as consistently as we would have liked). Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category.

Gender check: 6/28/11 – 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

On the Seattle Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 12:15 p.m. (PST) Tuesday, June 28, was titled “April home prices rise in Seattle and other U.S. cities, but analysts cautious.” Its subject was that home prices rose from the previous month for the first time in eight months, though analysts caution that it may just be a sign of temporary increases.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, chairman of index committee

2. Male, managing partner at investment bank

Notes/analysis: Most of the story was numbers based.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 12:15 p.m. (PST) Tuesday, June 28, was titled “Lesbian can sue UW for job discrimination, court rules.” Its subject was the Court of Appeals overturning a lower court ruling the statute of limitations had run out on a woman’s ability to sue the University of Washington, where she had worked, for what she claims was a hostile work environment.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female, subject

2. Male, her boss (according to complaint)

Notes/analysis: The story mainly rehashes the complaint and states the court’s reversal. The woman’s claims are based on her experience with her male boss’ treatment of her after he found out she was a lesbian. Among other things, he told her not to “flaunt” her sexual orientation. Here’s a link to the P-I’s original story on the suit when it was first filed: “UW sued by lesbian who says boss harassed her.”

In the newsroom: A look at gender breakdowns at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Beacon

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

This is the second in a series of posts (one from each of our geographical regions) looking at how our findings through our Gender Checks — that women have 31 percent of bylines thus far — compare to the actual makeups of these news sites’ newsrooms. The goal is to help determine what other factors may play a role in determining who bylines top-of-the-website stories.

Here’s a look at our monitored websites from the Midwest:

Midwest

During the first quarter, women bylined roughly 41.6 percent of the stories we “gender checked” in the Midwest’s geographic region. Those were distributed as 10 stories written by an individual woman and 14 by one or more man.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Stltoday.com)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newsroom contact list (accessed June 22) shows women as 31.3 percent of the staff members listed. The number of women in the newsroom is at a much lower percentage than has shown up in the bylines on top stories on Stltoday.com, which during the first quarter showed a 50-50 ratio of men to women in the articles we checked. Of those articles from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the first quarter, six were by a woman and six by a man or two.

The gender breakdown in the Post-Dispatch newsroom appears to fall mostly along traditional lines. Women made up the majority only of the arts and entertainment (six to two) as well as the lifestyle (five to one) and health (three to one) staffs. On the other hand, the biggest differences for men were in sports (20 to one) and business (seven to two) staffs. If those under news staffs are tallied up (general assignment, city beats, city hall, main news, metro and national/international), men outnumber women at a ratio of more than three to one.

Of those listed as specifically online news staff, three were female and five were male. The deputy managing editor/online is male — Bob Rose.

St. Louis Beacon

As is typical, the St. Louis Beacon, the online-only news outlet we monitor in this region, has a much smaller staff than the newspaper-based St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Women actually make up the majority of the 15-person editorial and reporting staff (accessed June 22) — nine are female, or 60 percent.

However, even though the St. Louis Beacon has a much greater percentage of female news staff than its newspaper competitor, that has not yet been the case in its byline record through our Gender Checks. During the first quarter, four articles were by women while eight were by men. It’s still early to determine whether this is an ongoing trend.

Unlike with the Seattle P-I, where an apparent emphasis on crime reporting displayed on the top of the website brought out more male bylines, there does not necessarily appear to be a trend at this point here. Three of the eight male bylines belong to one reporter whose topics were of state and city government issues but the rest are spread out between two other reporters and a “special to” the Beacon contributor. All four articles with female bylines counted in our Gender Checks as of the first quarter were of different authorship.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the editor of the Beacon is a woman, Margaret Wolf Freivogel, who is also one of the site’s founders. According to her on-site bio, she has received recognition for her coverage of women in politics and served as president of the Journalism and Women’s Symposium.

Note: For the purposes of our study, most of our data for the breakdowns of the individual newsrooms we feature have and will come from what is readily available online through the news sites’ own contact and staff listing pages. From what we know from our own experience in the industry, we’re aware these aren’t always quite up to date, but they should give us a general idea of what the newsrooms look like. We’ve stuck to newsroom staff for our purposes. This may vary by news site, as some, particularly newspapers, include different staff positions on their lists.

Read the first post in this series, which looked at the staff breakdowns at the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I, here. Watch for the next installment coming soon. Two more posts remain in this series — the Northeast and the South.