authorship

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

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

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.

First quarter: Women are 24.6 percent of sources, 31 percent of authors

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Women were represented as 24.6 percent of sources and 31 percent of authors in the first quarter of Gender Checks here at the Gender Report.

In our first three months of Gender Checks, we monitored two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only — in four different geographic regions. We recorded 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.)

Before we share our findings, it’s important for our readers to understand that these results reflect a limited amount of data. We hope you understand the limitations of this when we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research will be needed.

Sources

For sources, the results fall closely in line with other studies (like the Global Media Monitoring Project) that have pegged women at 24 percent of sources on traditional platforms and 23 percent of sources online, though the web part of that study was in its first year.

Of the geographic regions, the Northeast (NYTimes.com and ProPublica) had the lowest representation of women at 19.8 percent of sources. This region also had the highest source total overall. The South performed best for women at 32.8 percent, though we’ll note that we did miss a couple of weeks of Gender Checks there and that may have skewed our results.

Online-only sites had a slightly more equitable representation of women in their sources than those that are attached to traditional newspapers at 25.9 versus 23 percent as well as the most sources overall (Thanks in part to lengthy pieces by ProPublica and the St. Louis Beacon).

Authorship

Authorship numbers, at an average of 31 percent of bylines going to women, are below what other studies have measured at traditional media. The latest American Society of News Editors reports that women make up 36.9 percent of those working full-time at U.S. daily newspapers. A separate global study by the International Women’s Media Foundation found that in positions that produce the news, women hold 36 percent of reporter jobs, or positions at the “junior professional level” and 41 percent of positions at the senior professional level, which includes anchors, senior writers and producers.

Our lower findings could reflect a difference in which reporters solely write for the web as well as which gender tends to write the stories about certain topics (crime and government in particular) that tend to appear as lead stories on news pages, from which we select our articles to monitor. We intend to explore this further in future posts.

The byline totals are still low when divided out among geographic regions, so it’s early to lean too heavily on those numbers. It’s looking like the Northeast has low representations of women in its bylines and the Midwest and South appear more equitable.

While online-only sites were better for women as sources, they were not when it came to giving them bylines. Women only had 19.1 percent of bylines in the first quarter of our study at these sites, while those sites connected to newspapers had a far more equitable representation at 45 percent. Again, this may reflect web writing staffs, and perhaps staffs at online-only sites lean male more so than those at newspaper sites. We’ll be looking at that breakdown in the near future as well.

To see how our findings broke out by month, see these related posts:

Below you’ll find the complete breakdown of our results from the first quarter.

First quarter: Jan. 18 – April 15, 2011

We reviewed 96 articles, two in each Gender Check. That amounts to 13 Gender Checks per geographical region, with one less in the Midwest and two less in the South.

Sourcing

The articles contained 334 male sources and 109 female sources, which put women at about 24.6 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. (Not including those whose gender could not be identified)

Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 75 males, 31 female (Women at 29.2 percent)
  • Northeast: 130 males, 32 females (Women at 19.8 percent)
  • Midwest: 86 males, 25 females (Women at 22.5 percent)
  • South: 43 male, 21 female (Women at 32.8 percent)

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

  • Newspaper website: 157 males, 47 females (Women at 23 percent)
  • Online-only:  177 males, 62 females (Women at 25.9 percent)

Authorship

Overall, 27 articles were written by an individual woman and 60 by one or more man, which meant women were 31 percent of authors during the first quarter. In addition, eight articles had a shared byline with a man (or several) and a woman.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 6 stories by an individual woman, 17 by one or more man (Women at 26 percent)
  • Northeast: 3 by an individual woman, 18 by one or more man (Women at 14.2 percent)
  • Midwest: 10 by a woman, 14 by one or more man (Women at 41.6 percent)
  • South: 8 by a woman, 11 by one or more man (Women at 42 percent)

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

  • Newspaper website: 18 by a woman, 22 by one or more man (Women at 45 percent)
  • Online-only: 9 by a woman, 38 by one or more man (Women at 19.1 percent)

We’re interested in what you make of the findings. It’s early, but is there an aspect you’d be interested to see us explore more? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or email us at genderreport@gmail.com.

Third month finds dip in percentage of female authors

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Women still made up less than 30 percent of sources in our third month of Gender Checks, while the number of female authors in our sample also dipped below 30 percent this month.

Since this marked month three, we’re working on a quarter roundup of our findings, but in the meantime we’ve tallied up our results from the month to share. Here’s what we found:

Third Month: March 22 – April 15, 2011

We reviewed 28 articles, two in each Gender Check. We aimed for each geographical region to have four Gender Checks, but in this time period we missed one week for the South and one for the Midwest.

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. We recorded 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.)

Sourcing

The articles contained 91 male sources and 28 female sources, which put women at about 23.5 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: 23 males, 10 female (Women at 30.3 percent)
  • Northeast: 37 males, 10 females (Women at 21.3 percent)
  • Midwest: 13 males, 4 females (Women at 23.5 percent)
  • South: 18 male, 4 female (Women at 18 percent)

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

  • Newspaper website: 50 males, 8 females (Women at 13.8 percent)
  • Online-only:  41 males, 20 females (Women at 32.8 percent)

Authorship

Overall, seven articles were written by an individual woman and 19 by one or more man, which meant women were 26.9 percent of authors this month. In addition, two articles had a shared byline with a man (or two) and a woman.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: No stories by an individual woman, 7 by a man, 1 by two men and a woman
  • Northeast: 1 by an individual woman, 2 by an individual man, 4 by two men, 1 by a man and a woman
  • Midwest: 3 by a woman, 3 by men
  • South: 3 by a woman, 3 by men

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

  • Newspaper website: 3 by a woman, 7 by a man, 2 by two men, 2 by a man (or two) and a woman
  • Online-only: 4 by a woman, 8 by a man, 2 by two men

Here’s our monthly reminder: These results reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you understand the limitations of this data, however telling. We’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research is needed to verify any validity across the board.

Check back later this week for our first quarter averages and observations from our Gender Checks as a whole.

Women make up 27.6% of sources in first month

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

We completed our first month’s worth of Gender Checks last week and the results were, well, not terribly surprising.

Our findings are close to being in line with other studies that have been done on gender representation in the news, and, though the results aren’t encouraging for women, they do tell us that our process seems to be working.

Before we fill you in on the results we’d like to remind our readers that this is just a single month’s worth of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you understand the limitations of this data, however telling. We’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research is needed to verify any validity across the board.

Jan. 18 – Feb. 18, 2011

We reviewed 38 articles, two in each Gender Check. Each geographical region had five Gender Checks, with the exception of the South, which had four (We missed one week).

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. We recorded information such as 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.)

Overall, these were the findings:

Sourcing

The articles contained 144 male sources and 55 female sources, which put women at about 27. 6 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This is a slightly higher percentage of female sources than the Global Media Monitoring Project found in 2010 — approximately 23 percent of the news subjects on the 84 websites monitored were women.

Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 29 males, 17 females (Women at 37 percent)
  • Northeast: 65 males, 19 females (Women at 22.6 percent)
  • Midwest: 34 males, 10 females (Women at 22.7 percent)
  • South: 16 male, 9 female (Women at 36 percent)

And, as an additional aspect we’re interested to study over time, here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 66 males, 31 females (Women at 32 percent)
  • Online-only: 78 males, 24 females (Women at 23.5 percent)

As we did our Gender Checks this month, we tried to provide context as we could when the gender gap in the sourcing was particularly stark — such as the number of women in that profession (like this one on female judges) or in that political arena (like this one on women in the Missouri Legislature) — because sometimes that becomes a factor in source selection. It’s an aspect of this issue that we’ll continue to look at in the future.

Authorship

Overall, 11 articles were written by an individual woman and 19 by a single man. In addition, three articles had a shared byline with a man and a woman, four were shared bylines by men, and one was written by three men and one woman. If we just look at the articles written by a single author, women made up 36.7 percent of the authors — roughly what the GMMP in 2010 found.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 5 by an individual woman, 4 by a man, 1 by a man and a woman
  • Northeast: 1 by a woman, 6 by one to three men, 2 by a man and a woman, 1 by three men and one woman
  • Midwest: 2 by a woman, 8 by men (one of which was by two men)
  • South: 3 by a woman, 5 by men (one of which was written by two men)

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

  • Newspaper website: 8 by a woman, 8 by a man or multiple men, 3 by a man and a woman
  • Online-only: 3 by a woman, 15 by a man, 1 by three men and one woman

When looking at the gender gap in the authors, we’ll also need to keep in mind the make-up of the individual news website’s staff and who is on duty to publish to the web on the day we do our Gender Checks each week. Those factors could play a role in our final results and are elements we’ll be looking into in the future.

We’ll be posting our results like this on a monthly and quarterly basis. As time goes by, we’ll be looking for other trends, including the subjects featured as lead articles on these news websites and what kind of correlation that may have to the gender of the author and the sources. We’ll also be seeking out and sharing the existing explanations on why we see the trends we do.

This is only the beginning of the data we hope to gather here at The Gender Report. Stay tuned for our weekly Gender Checks from each region. Additionally, we’ll be exploring other ways of looking at gender representation in the news in coming posts.

We’re also interested in your feedback. How are we doing? What information are you interested in when it comes to gender representations in online news? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or e-mail us at genderreport@gmail.com.