Author: Jasmine R. Linabary

Database shows women as 28 percent of news sites’ principal staff

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Approximately 28 percent of the principal staff members at online news outlets are female, at least according to data pulled from the Columbia Journalism Review‘s database of online news sites.

The News Frontier Database is a collection of searchable data and write-ups on 125 outlets, with more added on a regular basis as they fit the criteria. It includes information on the type of coverage, staff sizes, revenue sources and content management systems of the sites along with written profiles and links to CJR coverage.

Most interesting to us was the “principal staff” listing for each outlet in the database. According to the survey news sites are requested to fill out for consideration to be added to the directory, CJR requests a list of the top editorial staff members and titles. It’s suggested news sites stick to naming three individuals, but the directory will include up to five. Sites have offered up names of one to five people who hold a variety of position titles from upper management to writers and contributors and those who do some of everything.

We pulled information from the database June 3 to get a general idea, based on what was provided, of how well women are represented among the positions news sites considered relevant and important to list as “principal staff.”  Aside from the overall finding that women represented 28 percent of those listed, here are some of the other interesting tidbits we discovered from looking at this data:

Missing gender

Most disturbing was the fact that 46.4 percent of the sites in the database had no female listed at all. A male was absent from the principal staff list on only 8.8 percent of sites.

There were a total of 125 sites on the day we pulled the data. Fifteen sites listed more women than men, while the database contained 84 sites where the number of men listed outnumbered the women (This includes those sites with no person of a certain gender listed).

Staff size

We also took a look at the data by editorial staff size. In the case of all 15 sites listed as having one editorial staff member, all of the singular principal staff members were male. One site listed both a male and a female (she was art director), though it was noted that the male was the only paid staff member. This seems to suggest that men are more likely than women to develop and run an online news outlet solo.

When the representation of men and women at the news sites was divided out by the range of editorial staff members, a trend emerged that appears to show women have greater representation among the principal staffs of smaller sites (the exception being the staff of one, see above) and increasingly less representation as the staffs get larger until it hits the “more than 40” range. Here’s how that plays out. For sites with the editorial staff specified, the following percent of principal staff members listed are female:

  • 2 to 5 editorial staff: 32.9 percent
  • 6 to 10 editorial staff: 31.3 percent
  • 11 to 20 editorial staff: 18.9 percent
  • 21 to 40 editorial staff: 9 percent
  • More than 40 editorial staff: 20 percent

Type of coverage

When it came to the type of coverage listed in the database entry, women had parity on hyperlocal sites and for those that covered education with representation hovering between 48 and 50 percent.

No women were included for sites with the type of coverage listed as ethnic, foreign, sports or transportation, though only a few sites from each at this point are included in the database.

Women represented 20 percent or less of the principal staffs for sites that covered business, politics, science and technology. In the case of politics, 11 of the 20 sites with that coverage type did not list a female principal staff member.

The remaining coverage areas — arts and culture, general and investigative — showed women at 26 to more than 34 percent of principal staffs, with investigative at the higher end.

Site location and coverage area

Women were better represented overall from sites identified with a particular state only rather than those that were considered national. Women made up 31.6 percent of the principal staff members listed at state-specific sites versus 20 percent of those from national sites.

Twenty-two of the 37 sites under “national” did not include a woman in their principal staff lists. Only one national site did not list a male and it covered arts and culture.

This information gathered from The News Frontier Database gives us just a glimpse of what the gender breakdowns at these online-only publications might be, at least in the positions considered to be key to the organizations.

To see how these results compare to other studies as well as information we’ve gathered, view our posts on findings and statistics. Additional research on women’s representation in the news media, can be found on our “Useful Resources” page.

Gender check: 6/2/11 – Midwest

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

On Stltoday.com, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 1:45 p.m. (PST) Thursday, June 2, was titled “Nixon: Missouri economy is gaining momentum.” Its subject was the governor speaking on the economy.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, governor

2. Female, state budget director (reported)

Notes/analysis: The article was mostly about the governor’s statements along with statistics.


Website: St. Louis Beacon

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 1:45 p.m. (PST) Thursday, June 2, was titled “Are charter schools illegal in St. Louis? The law works in mysterious ways.” Its subject was the legality of charter schools being questioned after the population dips below a threshold.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, school board member (via email)

2. Male, general counsel from state department

3. Male, spokesman (unnamed, for the attorney general’s office)

Notes/analysis: The article also cites from different laws and codes applicable to the situation.

In the newsroom: A look at gender breakdowns at the Seattle Times, Seattle P-I

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When it comes to who gets the prominent news story byline, several factors are usually at play.

Thus far here at The Gender Report, we’ve been simply recording the gender of the authors of the articles we turn up in our weekly Gender Checks, which we pull from the articles that appear as top stories on the news sites at the time we examine those sites on that particular day. According to our first-quarter findings, women made up roughly 31 percent of authors of those news stories we examined.

In a series of posts (one from each of our geographical regions), we’re going to look at how these findings reflect the actual makeups of these news sites’ newsrooms. That will help us as we take a look at what other factors may be involved in those top-of-the-website bylines.

As a starting point for context since half of the news websites in our sample are tied to a traditional newspaper, in its most recent newsroom census, the American Society of News Editors reported that women make up 36.9 percent of those working full-time at U.S. daily newspapers.

For the sake of our study, most of our data for the breakdowns of the individual newsrooms we feature will come from what was readily available online through the news sites’ own contact and staff listing pages. From our experience in the industry, we know these aren’t always quite up to date, but it 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.

Without further delay, in our first post in the series, here’s a look at the West.

West

In the first quarter, women bylined 26 percent of the stories we “gender checked” in the West. Six stories were by an individual woman and 17 were by one or more man.

Seattle Times

Overall, the Seattle Times newsroom and seattletimes.com staff list (accessed May 25) shows women as 45.5 percent of the staff members listed. That about matches the percentage of female bylines we found (45 percent) in our newspaper-based news sites in the first quarter, of which the Seattle Times is one. Of the articles we examined from the Seattle Times in the first quarter, five were by a woman, five by a man, two with a shared byline with a woman and one or more man, and one by contributors.

Interestingly, on the Seattle Times’ staff, women matched or slightly exceeded the number of men in the executive staff, business and technology staff and local news staff.

As was to be expected, traditionally male-dominated fields within journalism appeared as such at the Seattle Times. Sports had 13 male staff and two female, according to its online staff list. The photography staff had 13 males and three females. The investigations staff had four males and one female. Women made up the majority of the entertainment staff with seven women to three men.

Of those who are specifically listed as staff of seattletimes.com, eight were female while six were male. The managing editor of digital news and innovation has been a woman, Kathy Best, since 2007. According to her LinkedIn page, Best is now the managing editor in charge of content creation after a newsroom reorganization this spring. That same reorganization likely caused other changes on the staff list.

Seattle P-I

The Seattle P-I, formerly a newspaper until it went online only in 2009, has a much smaller staff than its newspaper competitor, the Seattle Times. Of the 20-person news staff (accessed May 25), six are female, or 30 percent. In this case, however, our findings did not match up with the staff list breakdown. During Gender Checks, only one article in the first quarter was by a woman, while 12 were by males. Overall among our online-only news sites, women had 19.1 percent of the bylines in that time frame.

The main reason for this at the P-I, by our deduction, is that we see the same byline often producing the lead stories of the day. Most of the stories given top billing on the website are crime related and, therefore, written by crime news gatherer Levi Pulkkinen. Since we pull from the top stories displayed on the website at the time we visit it to conduct our weekly Gender Checks, the male-female byline ratio in this case is more reflective of editorial choices than the actual staff makeup.

It’s noteworthy that the executive producer of the P-I is a woman, Michelle Nicolosi. She also managed the site’s transition to become online only. Other woman-held positions include news gatherer (including aerospace), producer and community editor.

Watch for the next installment in the series looking at the staff breakdowns at our monitored sites coming soon.

Gender check: 5/31/11 – West

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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: Seattle Times

On the Seattle Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 10:45 a.m. (PST) Tuesday, May 31, was titled “Developers cash in on tax breaks in vogue neighborhoods.” Its subject was concerns with a city program to encourage affordable housing.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female, city council member

2. Male, executive director of organization

3. Male, city council member

4. Female, state senator

5. Male, city council member

6. Female, city’s program manager

7. Male, housing director

Notes/analysis: Three of the nine Seattle City Council members are female.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 10:45 a.m. (PST) Tuesday, May 31, was titled “Home prices tick up in Seattle from February low.” Its subject was a slight increase in home prices in Seattle from earlier this year.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, chairman in report

2. Male, senior economist at bank

3. Male, U.S. economist

4. Female, analyst

MSNBC’s Schultz suspended for calling conservative host Ingraham a ‘slut’

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In media-related news this week, MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz, host of “The Ed Show,” was suspended for a week without pay after calling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” and a “talk slut” on his radio program.

Schultz was responding to Ingraham’s recent comments regarding President Barack Obama’s trip to Europe while the wake of the tornado in Joplin, Mo., when he twice called her a “slut” Tuesday.

MSNBC released a statement quoted by news sources saying, “Remarks of this nature are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” The statement did suggest that management had allowed him to decide on his punishment, noting after a meeting with Schultz they had “accepted his offer to take one week of unpaid leave.”

Schultz issued an apology on Wednesday on air before handing his show over to the fill-in host. In his comments, he acknowledged that his words were “vile and inappropriate.” He said, “It was wrong, uncalled-for and I recognize the severity of what I said.”

On her radio show Thursday, Ingraham accepted his apology, noting that “It seemed heartfelt.”

The Women’s Media Center started a Change.org petition calling for Schultz suspension. It received nearly 500 signatures before his suspension was announced.  According to the Change.org release, Schultz and MSNBC have agreed to meet with the organization to discuss the issue.

While the Women’s Media Center acknowledged that it doesn’t always see eye to eye with Ingraham, the language used undermined all women. In its action alert, the group stated, “Ms. Ingraham is no friend to the Women’s Media Center, but a sexist and misogynist attack based on her gender and not her political views or comments is harmful to women in media, politics, and beyond.”

Some commentators and news sites noted this isn’t the first time an MSNBC host has come under fire for sexist comments. Chris Matthews eventually apologized for his coverage of Hillary Clinton with comments calling her (among other things) a “she-devil.” David Shuster received a suspension after he referred to Chelsea Clinton being “pimped out” by the campaign.

In an opinion for The Guardian, Melissa McEwan notes that hosts tend to get in trouble for overt sexism, like directly calling a woman a “slut” but not for those comments that are more covert creating a “just don’t get caught” mentality.

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.