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Studies undertaken by The Gender Report.

One year: Examining the prominence of female sources in Gender Check study

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: In January 2011, we set out to examine the ways in which women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our first year here at The Gender Report, we’re revealing our findings from our year-long studies as well as other statistics and commentaries in a series of posts. View other coverage of our one-year anniversary here.

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As we unveiled earlier this week, women made up 26 percent of human sources referenced in the articles we monitored as part of our Gender Check project. This percentage gives us a general idea of representation of women’s voices in the news, but it does not reveal how prominently these voices were incorporated. We’ve explored our data a little more indepthly so that we can address this issue and questions such as this: Was the first source in a story – a position of more weight in some respects — even more likely to male than female?

We looked at this after the six-month mark of our study, and found were at least some small signs of a lack of prominence of women sources in the online news articles we monitored. After a year, we find similar evidence.

In our year-long study, we had examined 354 articles from eight U.S. online news websites (for more details on the study, click here). Thirty-one of the articles contained no human sources. Less than 10 percent of articles had nine or more sources. The most sources a story had, as was true at the six-month point, was 25 — an article in June from ProPublica about the criminal justice process in murder cases involving children.

Roughly 15.5 percent, or 55 articles, were single-source stories. That source was male in 35 of the articles, female in 18 and unidentified in two. That made women 32.7 percent of sources in single-source stories.

The number of female sources only exceeded that of male sources twice: when we were down to two articles at source No. 21 and down to one article at source No. 25. Female sources only exceeded one-third at two other times – source No. 16 (five articles) and source No. 22 (two articles). This has remained consistent since since the six-month mark.

The first source of the articles in our sample was female 23.5 percent of the time, but the percentage of sources that were female jumped 5 or 6 percentage points for the second and third sources and then dropped back down to 21.2 percent for the fourth source.

Here’s what we found for the first five sources in a story as well as the last source in the articles.

  • First source: 23.5 percent female (in 323 articles)
  • Second source: 29.5 percent female (in 268 articles)
  • Third source: 28.3 percent female (in 205 articles)
  • Fourth source: 21.2 percent female (in 151 articles)
  • Fifth source: 25.9 percent female (in 108 articles)
  • Last source: 29 percent female (in 269 articles – not including single source stories)

In addition to the order of sources, we also examined the number of expert and non-expert sources of both genders. An expert source is an official or public figure, a person in position of authority or someone with significant knowledge on the subject.

In the articles we monitored, a larger portion of the female sources referenced in were non-experts compared to male sources. Non-experts made up 29.2 percent of female sources but just 14.1 percent of male sources. Overall, 17.9 percent of sources were non-experts.

These findings in particular raise more questions for us. Does this reflect a lack of female experts as a whole or is something different at work? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or using the #GRdiscuss hashtag on Twitter.

For more results from our year-long Gender Check project revealed this week, review the links below:

For more information on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” and “Useful Resources” pages.

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One year: A look at female authors, sources by article subject in Gender Check study

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: In January 2011, we set out to examine the ways in which women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our first year here at The Gender Report, we’re revealing our findings from our year-long studies as well as other statistics and commentaries in a series of posts. View other coverage of our one-year anniversary here.

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What article subjects have the lowest representation of female sources and authors? Well, that’s what we’ve looked at in the data from our year-long Gender Check monitoring study.

Yesterday, we released findings in two parts, one on female sources and another on female authors, from this project. We’ve decided to look at our data in some additional ways, including by article subject, to see if there are any differences in the representation of women as sources and authors. We first explored this after the six-month mark in our study and again after nine months. Now after completing 12 months of the project, we’ve examined each of the 354 articles we gender checked by topic to see if the differences we uncovered at earlier points in the study still hold. (For the Gender Check study, we monitored the lead news articles from eight U.S. online news websites. For details, click here.)

To determine article subject, we’ve made use (to the best of our ability) of the Global Media Monitoring Project‘s news stories classification system (Click for a PDF of the system) to categorize stories. This system divides articles into eight categories with a numbering system for further breakdowns within each category.  None of our articles have fallen under the categories of “Other” and ‘The Girl-Child” yet, so we’re sticking with the six remaining categories.

After a year of study, here’s how the articles broke down by subject.

Articles by subject

The largest number of our articles have still fallen under “Crime and Violence” (106 out of 354).The category with the fewest articles was “Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports” with 21 articles. Below, we’ve broken down each larger category by the number of articles in our sample, the subjects within that category associated with the highest number of articles, and the news site or sites that were the sources for the largest number of articles in that category.

  • Politics and Government: 72 articles; Key subjects: “Other domestic politics, government” (43 articles); Main source: St. Louis Beacon (19 articles)
  • Economy: 73 articles; Key subjects: “Economic policies, strategies” (17 articles); Main source: Seattle Times (15 articles) and St. Louis Beacon (13 articles)
  • Science and Health: 33 articles; Key subjects: “Medicine, health, hygiene, safety” (10 articles); Main source: ProPublica (10 articles)
  • Social and Legal: 49 articles; Key subjects: “Education, childcare, nursery, university, literacy” and “Legal system, judiciary, legislation apart from family” (both with 19 articles); Main source: Seattle Times (11 articles)
  • Crime and Violence: 106 articles; Key subjects: “Violent crime, murder, abduction, assault” (36 articles) and “Non-violent crime, bribery, theft, drugs, corruption” (30 articles); Main sources: Seattle P-I (33 articles) and Stltoday.com (24 articles)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 21 articles; Key subjects: “Arts, entertainment, leisure, cinema, books, dance” (10 articles); Main sources: Patch (Seminole Heights) (7 articles)

As a note to our readers, we acknowledge that the sample of articles in some categories is still small, so please keep in mind that limitation when viewing our data.

Here’s how the gender representations worked out within those categories:

Sourcing

“Politics and Government” articles dropped to the bottom with the lowest percentage of female sources at 19.9 percent. “Social and Legal” articles had the highest percentage of female sources with 31.4 percent, passing “Science and Health” articles, which had maintained the highest percentage at both the six and nine month marks. As demonstrated in our overall findings, the total sample shows women as 26 percent of sources.

Here’s how it separated out by classification:

  • Politics and Government: 254 males, 63 females (Women as 19.9 percent)
  • Economy: 202 males, 60 females (Women as 22.9 percent)
  • Science and Health: 76 males, 31 females (Women as 29 percent)
  • Social and Legal: 129 males, 59 females (Women as 31.4 percent)
  • Crime and Violence: 262 males, 116 females (Women as 30.7 percent)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 55 males, 14 females (Women as 20.3 percent)

Authorship

“Science and Health” articles have continued to hold the lowest percentage of female authors at 18.2 percent overall. “Economy” articles have also still demonstrated highest percentage of female authors at 39.7 percent. Overall, women are 32.2 percent of authors.

Here’s the breakdown by classification:

  • Politics and Government: 26 stories by women, 38 by men, 6 shared bylines between a man and a woman, 2 other/unidentified (Women as 36.1 percent)
  • Economy: 29 by women, 40 by men, 4 shared (Women as 39.7 percent)
  • Science and Health: 6 by women, 24 by men, 2 shared, 1 other (Women as 18.2 percent)
  • Social and Legal: 17 by women, 30 by men, 2 shared (Women as 34.7 percent)
  • Crime and Violence: 31 by women, 62 by men, 10 shared, 3 other (Women as 29.2 percent)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 5 by women, 15 by men, 1 shared (Women as 23.8 percent)

Review our findings

Below you can find links to the breakdown of the articles in our Gender Check study at previous points in the year.

For other data on gender representations in online news and to compare these findings to others’, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category and our “Useful Resources” page.

We’re interested in what you make of the findings. Share your thoughts in the comment section below or using the #GRdiscuss hashtag on Twitter.

Women byline 32.2% of lead news articles in year-long Gender Check study

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: In January 2011, we set out to examine the ways in which women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our first year here at The Gender Report, we’re revealing our findings from our year-long studies as well as other statistics and commentaries in a series of posts. View other coverage of our one-year anniversary here.

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Women bylined 32.2 percent of all articles monitored in a year-long study of eight news websites.

This finding was based on the results of The Gender Report’s Gender Check project that aims to monitor gender representations in online news. In this study, we monitored the lead articles from two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one considered online-only — in each of the four geographic regions as defined by the U.S. Census. The websites we examined included the Seattle Times, Seattle P-I, New York Times, ProPublica, Stltoday.com, St. Louis Beacon, Miami Herald and Patch (Seminole Heights).

On a weekly basis, we selected the lead article from each site at the time we visited and performed a “Gender Check” by recording 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.)

This project began in January 2011 and concluded earlier this month. For the purposes of this study, this made a total of 53 weeks, but due to a missing week, resulted in a total of 52 weeks of monitoring for at least two of our geographic regions. Between Jan. 18, 2011 and Jan. 19, 2012, we examined a total of 354 articles, averaging about 29.5 articles per month. In total, this broke down to 104 articles each from the West and Midwest regions, 78 articles from the Northeast and 68 articles from the South. These lower counts in the Northeast and South are the result of missed weeks. Though this may have have some slight affect on the overall findings, the standings of these regions among the others have remained consistent over time. Earlier today we released the first findings from this study regarding sources in these news articles, reporting that women were 26 percent of human sources referenced overall.

When it came to bylines, women wrote 114 of the articles in our study, while men wrote 209. Twenty-five articles had a shared byline between a man (or men) and a woman. Six articles were by contributors, staff or unbylined. These totals mean women bylined 32.2 percent of articles in our study, and 35.3 percent of articles by a person (or persons) of one gender or the other.

Twenty-two articles in our sample were written by more than one man, while only one article was bylined by more than one woman.

In only one month of our study did the count of women’s bylines exceeded that of men. In the fourth month, women bylined 16 of 32 stories. Men wrote 12 and the remainder were shared bylines between a man and a woman. The lowest percentage of female bylines came in month nine, when women byline 25 percent of articles by authors of one gender or the other and 21.4 percent overall.

Geographic regions

In terms of geographic regions, our sites from the Northeast have continued to hold the lowest percentage of female bylines with 24.4 percent of the articles overall. In our sites from the South, women were nearest parity at 42.6 percent.

  • West: 29 stories by one or more woman, 68 by one or more man, four with a shared byline between a man and a woman, three by contributors or staff (Women at 27.9 percent overall)
  • Northeast: 19 by an individual woman, 47 by one or more man, 12 with a shared byline (Women at 24.4 percent overall)
  • Midwest: 37 by a woman, 58 by one or more man, seven with a shared byline, two by staff (Women at 35.6 percent overall)
  • South: 29 by a woman, 36 by one or more man, two with a shared byline, one unknown (Women at 42.6 percent overall)

Newspaper vs. online-only websites

As we’ve discovered throughout our study, though newspaper-connected sites may have fewer female sources than their online-only counterparts, they do fair a bit better than them when it comes to female bylines. Of the articles from newspaper sites in our study, women byline 38.2 percent of articles by a person(s) of one gender or the other and 33.9 percent overall. This compared to 32.5 percent and 30.5 percent respectively at online-only outlets. This trend held true in all geographic regions, except the Northeast, where ProPublica had a higher percentage of female bylines than the New York Times.

  • Newspaper website: 60 by a woman, 97 by one or more man, 17 with shared bylines between a man and woman, three by contributors/staff (Women at 33.9 percent overall)
  • Online-only: 54 by a woman, 112 by one or more man, eight with shared bylines, three by contributors/staff (Women at 30.5 percent overall)

Individual news websites

The New York Times had the lowest percentage of female bylines overall at 17.95 percent. We did have one site — the Miami Herald — that at the time of our study’s completion showed women as 50 percent of bylines overall.

We want to note that when broken down by each individual news site, our sample size is still small so readers should keep that in mind. More research will be needed to determine whether these percentages are indeed accurate for the individual sites. For now, this is what we’ve found:

  • Seattle Times: 17 by a woman, 31 by one or more man, three with shared bylines, one by contributors/staff (Women at 33 percent overall)
  • Seattle P-I: 12 by a woman, 37 by one or more man, one with a shared byline, two by contributors/staff (Women at 23.1 percent overall)
  • New York Times: Seven by a woman, 25 by one or more man, seven with shared bylines (Women at 17.95 percent overall)
  • ProPublica: 12 by a woman, 22 by one or more man, five with shared bylines (Women at 30.8 percent overall)
  • Stltoday.com: 19 by a woman, 26 by one or more man, five with shared bylines, two by contributors/staff (Women at 36.5 percent overall)
  • St. Louis Beacon: 18 by a woman, 32 by one or more man, two with shared bylines (Women at 34.6 percent overall)
  • Miami Herald: 17 by a woman, 15 by one or more man, two with shared bylines (Women at 50 percent overall)
  • Patch (Seminole Heights): 12 by a woman, 21 by one or more man, one unknown (Women at 35.3 percent overall)

Review findings

Later this week, we’ll be providing a recap of all of our write-ups related to this study’s findings. We’ll also be looking at our Gender Check project data by article subject and by source order.

As a note to our readers, this study does have some limitations. This data simply reflects our findings from eight news websites and results should not be assumed to represent all sites in the regions or the industry as a whole. Further research is needed to confirm or elaborate on these findings, which is something we’ll be looking to do in year two. Stay tuned for more.

For other data on gender representations in online news and to compare these findings to others’, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category and our “Useful Resources” page.

We’re interested in what you make of the findings. Share your thoughts in the comment section below or using the #GRdiscuss hashtag on Twitter.

Findings show women as 26% of news sources in year-long Gender Check study

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: In January 2011, we set out to examine the ways in which women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our first year here at The Gender Report, we’re revealing our findings from our year-long studies as well as other statistics and commentaries in a series of posts. View other coverage of our one-year anniversary here.

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Women were 26 percent of human sources referenced in lead articles monitored in a year-long study of eight online news sites.

The Gender Report’s Gender Check monitoring project began in January 2011 and concluded earlier this month. For this project, we monitored the articles weekly from two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one considered online-only — in each of the four different geographic regions as defined by the U.S. Census. These websites included the Seattle Times, Seattle P-I, New York Times, ProPublica, Stltoday.com, St. Louis Beacon, Miami Herald and Patch (Seminole Heights).

The study time frame resulted in a total of 53 weeks, but due to a missing week, resulted in a total of 52 weeks of monitoring for at least two of our geographic regions. Between Jan. 18, 2011 and Jan. 19, 2012, we examined a total of 354 articles, averaging about 29.5 articles per month. In total, this broke down to 104 articles each from the West and Midwest regions, 78 articles from the Northeast and 68 articles from the South. These lower counts in the Northeast and South are the result of missed weeks. Though this may have have some slight affect on the overall findings, the standings of these regions among the others have remained consistent over time.

Of a total of 1,321 human sources in the articles we monitored, 978 were male and 343 were female. These totals do not include those whose gender could not be identified.

The year high came with women as 34.4 percent of sources in the 11th month with our low at 19.5 percent in the fifth month.

Approximately 123 of the 354 articles monitored contained only male sources (no female sources), or 34.7 percent. This compared to 25 articles with only female sources, or 7.1 percent. Thirty-one articles contained no human sources and two only had a single unnamed source whose gender was not identifiable.

Geographic regions

Among geographic regions, the sites we monitored from the South had the highest percentage of women as sources at 33.1 percent. The sites from the Northeast had the lowest at 19.4 percent. These regions have maintained the high and low percentages respectively during each quarter of our study.

Here’s how sources broke down geographically:

  • West: 258 males, 109 females (Women at 29.7 percent)
  • Northeast: 290 males, 70 females (Women at 19.4 percent)
  • Midwest: 315 males, 107 females (Women at 25.4 percent)
  • South: 115 male, 57 female (Women at 33.1 percent)

Newspaper vs. online-only websites

The online-only outlets we monitored have maintained a trend of using a higher percentage of female sources than those associated with a newspaper. After a year of study, women were 29.1 percent of sources at online-only sites versus 23.2 percent at newspaper-connected sites. In every geographic region, the online-only site had a higher percentage of female sources than its newspaper counterpart.

Newspaper websites had more sources overall, but the highest percentage of sources per article belonged to the online-only site, the St. Louis Beacon at 5.2 sources. The lowest also came from an online-only outlet — the Patch site, with an average of 1.6 sources per article.

  • Newspaper website: 546 males, 165 females (Women at 23.2 percent)
  • Online-only: 432 males, 178 females (Women at 29.1 percent)

Individual news websites

During our study, Patch (Seminole Heights) had the highest percentage of female sources at 43.4 percent in the lead articles monitored on its website. It’s noteworthy that, as previously mentioned, this site also had the lowest number of sources overall as well.

The lowest percentage of female sources came from lead news articles from the The New York Times at only 13.8 percent, followed by Stltoday.com at 22.7 percent. These two sites have continued to hold the lowest percentages throughout the year, though more research would be needed to see if these percentages accurately reflect the content of these sites. We encourage readers to keep in mind that when broken down by each individual news site, our sample size is still small.

  • Seattle Times: 177 males, 70 females (Women at 28.3 percent)
  • Seattle P-I: 81 males, 39 females (Women at 32.5 percent)
  • New York Times: 168 males, 27 females (Women at 13.8 percent)
  • ProPublica: 122 males, 43 females (Women at 26.1 percent)
  • Stltoday.com: 116 males, 34 females (Women at 22.7 percent)
  • St. Louis Beacon: 199 males, 73 females (Women at 26.8 percent)
  • Miami Herald: 85 males, 34 females (Women at 28.6 percent)
  • Patch (Seminole Heights): 30 males, 23 females (Women at 43.4 percent)

Author gender and source selection

As part of this study, we examined how the author’s gender may have impacted  the use of female sources. As we have throughout the year, we saw a difference, with women having a slightly higher percentage of female sources than men.

Females were 28.3 percent of sources in articles written by women and 24 percent in those written by men. Articles with a shared byline between a man and women had women as 28.7 percent of sources.

  • Female authors: 269 males, 106 females (Women at 28.3 percent)
  • Male authors: 573 males, 181 females (Women at 24 percent)
  • Shared bylines: 124 males, 50 females (Women at 28.7 percent)

About this study

These findings were based on the results of our year-long Gender Check project to monitor U.S. news websites. For the monitoring, we selected the lead article from each site at the time we visited and performed a “Gender Check” by recording 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.)

As a note to our readers, this study does have some limitations. This data simply reflects our findings from eight news websites and results should not be assumed to represent all sites in the regions or the industry as a whole. Further research is needed to confirm or elaborate on these findings, which is something we’ll be looking to do in year two.

For other data on gender representations in online news and to compare these findings to others’, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category and our “Useful Resources” page.

Coming later today: Our findings on authorship of articles in this Gender Check monitoring project. Check back for more.

We’re interested in what you make of the findings. Share your thoughts in the comment section below or using the #GRdiscuss hashtag on Twitter.

One year: Project examines gender representations in the New Media Index

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: In January 2011, we set out to examine the ways in which women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our first year here at The Gender Report, we’re revealing our findings from our year-long studies as well as other statistics and commentaries in a series of posts. View other coverage of our one-year anniversary here.

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A year ago, we asked: What percentage of the most talked about articles on the web feature or are written by women? What we found as we sought to answer this question was not encouraging.

But before we share those results, here’s how we approached answering that question. For a full year, from January through December 2011, we monitored each of the web’s top articles based on the links provided by the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index reports. The New Media Index reports the top five linked to and discussed stories and opinion pieces from the web during a Monday through Friday week based on commentary from blogs and social media sites. For the purposes of our study, we chose to focus in on the main top five in the blogosphere.

During each month of this year span, between 11 and 33 articles could be checked, resulting in a total of 250 articles examined for the completed study.

Though each week generally averaged five subjects, there were occasions when more than one link was offered on the subject. When that was the case, we chose to monitor the first mentioned or that which appeared based on the writing as more dominant, unless it was mentioned or implied that two articles shared the attention, in which case we checked both. For some weeks or subjects, no links were provided, resulting in lower numbers during those months’ totals. For each article, we recorded the subject matter, the gender breakdown of the sources and the gender of the authors or producers, similar to what we’ve done with our weekly “gender checks.”

It is important to note that PEJ made some changes to its methodology for the New Media Index in August, including the use of more sites to track the top stories as well as a larger sample size and range of sources (Read more about those change and the process here.) As a result, we did see some major differences in the sources of the articles and our findings in the months after that change, which is why we’ve provided our results overall as well as broken out for those articles before the August changes and those after. This did skew the overall results, so we caution readers to keep these limitations in mind.

Without further ado, here are our overall findings for this study:

Sourcing

In this study, women were 19.1 percent of sources whose gender could be identified. Approximately 520 sources were male and 123 were female.

Our low and high points for the year for female sources came in the first six months. The low point for female sources came in May, when women were only 13.3 percent of sources. The high was in February with 28 percent.

Somewhat disturbing was the finding that 87 of the 250 articles, or 34.8 percent, had no female sources at all, in other words contained only male sources. However this percentage has dropped from the six-month mark, when 41.5 percent of articles contained no female sources. In contrast, only four articles had no male sources.

What has gone up is the percentage of articles with no sources at all. Only 8.5 percent of articles at the six-month mark had no sources. By 12 months, 30.4 percent, or 76 of 250 articles, had none. This difference was largely a result of the change in the New Media Index’s methodology, which resulted in more blog posts rather than news articles in the top five, many of which did not name human sources.

For articles in the sample written by women, females made up 25.1 percent of sources. In articles written by men, that percentage falls to 18.1. In articles with shared bylines between a man (or men) and a woman, 16.7 percent of sources were women.

Authorship

A woman (or on occasion two) bylined 23 percent of articles by authors of one gender or the other and 19.6 percent of articles overall. Over the course of the year, 164 articles were by one or more man, 49 by one or more woman, 16 with a shared byline between a man (or several) and a woman, and 21 were not bylined or were written by staff.

The year low for female authorship occurred in September, when women made up a dismal 9.5 percent of authors of one gender or the other and 8.3 percent overall. February again had the high with women as 41.7 percent.

Twenty-six articles linked to were op-ed or commentary pieces over the course of the year. Just three of those were by women. One was a staff editorial. In addition, of the blog posts, nearly all showing up after the change in methodology, five of 61 were by women and only one of eight posts by a business was by a woman.

During the year, 13 articles were written by more than one person of the same gender. Three were shared bylines with females and 10 shared bylines among males.

Before changes: January to July 2011

Prior to the change in the methodology for the New Media Index, the majority of links provided were to news articles from major news websites, with the majority of articles from the LA Times, Washington Post and BBC. In these seven months, we reviewed 137 articles, averaging 19.6 articles per month. These were the findings overall from these articles:

  • Women were 19.6 percent of sources during this time. The articles contained 374 male sources and 91 female sources. There were on average 66.4 sources in a given month.
  • During this time 45.3 percent of articles contained only male sources. Only three articles contained only female sources. Eleven articles, or 8 percent, contained no sources at all.
  • Thirty-eight articles were written or produced by women while 75 were written by men. This means women wrote 33.6 percent of articles by a person(s) of one gender or the other. Twelve articles had shared bylines between a man and a woman and 12 were by staff, meaning that women had 27.7 percent of bylines overall.

After changes: August to December 2011

In contrast, following the changes in the New Media Index, no particular website had more than five out of the total 113 articles or posts. Those that had five were three tech sites 9 to 5 Mac, Engadget and Ubergizmo, as well as posts from Google on its official company blog. The majority of the top stories during these five months were not from mainstream news sites, but instead blogs and specialty or alternative sites. During this time, there were an average of 22.6 articles per month. The following are the overall findings from these articles and posts:

  • Women were 18 percent of sources. The articles contained 146 male sources and 32 female sources. There were on average half as many sources in a given month as the earlier period with 35.6 sources per month.
  • In this time frame, 22.1 percent of articles, or 25 out of 113, contained no female sources (only male sources). Only one article was the reverse, containing only female sources. However, 57.5 percent of articles during these months, or 65 articles, contained no sources at all.
  • Just eleven articles were written or produced by women while 89 were written by men. By percentage, this means 11 percent of articles by a person(s) of one gender or the other. Four articles had shared bylines between a man and a woman and nine were by staff, making those articles written by women a mere 9.7 percent of the whole.

A look back

Review our posts from the year on our New Media Index study through the links below:

For other data on gender representations in online news and to compare these findings to others’, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category and our “Useful Resources” page.

Up next: Check back Wednesday for results from our year-long Gender Check study.

We’re interested in what you make of the findings. Share your thoughts in the comment section below or using the #GRdiscuss hashtag on Twitter.