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The Gender Report

A closer look at gender and online news

byline count

Women in journalism: Reading list for 3/2/2014

March 2, 2014April 6, 2014Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The Gender Report provides a weekly round-up of links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. The links below are to noteworthy articles on topics related to women in journalism and the media during the past week. Articles included in this feature do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gender Report or its writers. View past week’s round-ups here.

Reading List

–The VIDA Count 2013 – Lie by Omission: The Rallying Few, The Rallying Masses (VIDA)

–Surprise: men still greatly outnumber women in US and UK arts publications (The Guardian)

–VIDA Count of Women in Literary Journals Shows Remarkable Improvement (Jezebel)

–How not to be sexist when covering female candidates (Columbia Journalism Review)

–The Bechdel Test Sets the Bar Too Low. Let’s Write a New One. (XX Factor)

–Oscar Bias Is in the Numbers (Daily Beast)

–Tech shift: More women in computer science classes (SFGate)

–Women Digital Thinkers Tweet A Day in Their Lives: Join Us For #NPRWIT (NPR)

–16 women journalists on the Middle East front lines (Al-Monitor)

–A Lifetime of Art: Musola Cathrine Kaseketi (Women in the World)

–Meet the Woman Leading the Tech LadyMafia (Elle) On Aminatou Sow

–Kate Fagan, ESPN Writer: It’s ‘Just Really Good Business’ To Include Women’s Voices (HuffingtonPost)

–Q&A: Video Journalist, Jane Teeling (ReportHers)

–Julie Rovner Chosen as Robin Toner Distinguished Fellow (Kaiser Health News)

We encourage readers to submit suggestions of articles to include in future editions of this feature by sending an email to genderreport[at]gmail.com. For links to articles like these throughout the week, follow @GenderReport on Twitter.

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Reading ListAminatou Sow, Bechdel Test, byline count, female candidates, female journalists, Jane Teeling, Julie Rovner, Kate Fagan, Musola Cathrine Kaseketi, Oscars, VIDA, women in Hollywood, women in journalism, women in media, women in tech

Studying women’s representation in digital media: The challenges and limitations

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As we well know, and as the recent Status of Women in the U.S. Media report from the Women’s Media Center illustrates, women have long been underrepresented and misrepresented in traditional media and entertainment.WMCReport2014

Yet, little is still known about how that translates digitally. Continue reading →

Findings and Statistics, Other research, Our studiesAnn Friedman, byline count, female journalists, Global Media Monitoring Project, J. Nathan Matias, OpenGender Tracking Project, Status of Women in the U.S. Media, The OpEd Project, women in journalism, women in media, Women's Media Center

Women in journalism: Reading list 3/17/2013

March 17, 2013March 31, 2013Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The Gender Report provides a weekly round-up of links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. The links below are to noteworthy articles on topics related to women in journalism and the media during the past week. Articles included in this feature do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gender Report or its writers. View past week’s round-ups here.

Reading List

–Why I’m Canceling My Subscription: An Open Letter to ‘Harper’s’ from a Loyal Reader (Flavorwire)

–No progress for female bylines: VIDA’s latest byline count shows “gross (& indecent) neglect of female writers’ work” (Columbia Journalism Review)

-Yes, There Are a Lot of Women Writers on TV. What’s the Problem? (XX Factor)

–More women are needed in investigative journalism (Columbia Journalism Review)

–Christiane Amanpour’s tribute to courageous women (CNN)

–50 female innovators in digital journalism (Journalism.co.uk)

–CNN’s Steubenville Coverage Focuses On Effect Rape Trial Will Have On Rapists, Not Victim (Huffington Post)

–Judge releases Somali journalist jailed for interviewing alleged rape victim (Guardian)

–Media Portrayal of Black Women the Real ‘Scandal’ (Women’s eNews)

–Fox station apologizes for focus on breasts in Women’s Day story (JimRomenesko.com)

–Through her reporting and activism, Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, recipient of the 2013 Lyons Award, is giving voice to those who lack political power and access to the media (Nieman Reports)

–Sandy Close, recipient of the 2012 I.F. Stone Medal, has made a career out of helping ethnic communities and the dispossessed tell their own stories (Nieman Reports)

–Monday Q&A: EFF’s Jillian York on just-in-time censorship, scaling connectors, and the problem with banning porn (Nieman Journalism Lab)

We encourage readers to submit suggestions of articles to include in future editions of this feature by sending an email to genderreport[at]gmail.com. For links to articles like these throughout the week, follow @GenderReport on Twitter.

Reading Listbyline count, Christiane Amanpour, digital journalism, Fox, Harper's, International Women's Day, Jillian York, Marcela Turati, rape coverage, Sandy Close, VIDA, women in journalism

Women in journalism: Reading list 3/10/2013

March 10, 2013March 24, 2013Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The Gender Report provides a weekly round-up of links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. The links below are to noteworthy articles on topics related to women in journalism and the media during the past week. Articles included in this feature do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gender Report or its writers. View past week’s round-ups here.

Reading List

–Women Make the News 2013: Towards a Global Alliance on Media and Gender (UNESCO)

–Writing about powerful women: The media should stop treating Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer as though they represent their whole gender (Columbia Journalism Review)

–VIDA COUNT 2012: MIC CHECK, REDUX (VIDA: Women in Literary Arts)

–2012 VIDA Byline Gender Parity Count Is Out and Depressing As Ever (Jezebel)

–Data on gender that will make you smile, not groan: What does it take to create a news organisation that publishes a diversity of women’s voices? Explore the data and find out the reasons for the Global Voices’ success at gender equality (Guardian)

–Dramatic Gender Difference in NPR Stories (Forbes)

–Powerful photo essay on domestic violence stirs backlash (Poynter)

–2013 Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital News Frontier (IWMF)

–Women’s Representation At Big Publications Is Actually Dropping (BuzzFeed)

–A Tale of Two Journalists (Women’s Media Center)

–CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Her Entrepreneurial TV Future (Business Week)

We encourage readers to submit suggestions of articles to include in future editions of this feature by sending an email to genderreport[at]gmail.com. For links to articles like these throughout the week, follow @GenderReport on Twitter.

Reading Listbyline count, Global Voices, International Women's Media Foundation, Marissa Mayer, NPR, Sheryl Sandberg, Soledad O'Brien, UNESCO, VIDA, women in journalism

Byline Report: Who writes the news online? (6 months)

January 18, 2013February 17, 2015Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Research has long demonstrated a gender gap in who writes and produces the news, but less is known about how and if that gap has materialized online. The goal of our Byline Report project has been to take a look at how this plays out at online-only news websites. This six-month project examined the gender breakdown of bylines at six online news websites weekly based on the sites’ RSS feeds.

The 26-week byline count took place between July 1, 2012, and Dec. 29, 2012. Weekly reports were made throughout the study’s duration and can be accessed on our “Byline Report” page.

The study’s six websites were selected from the Columbia Journalism Review’s Guide to Online News Startups. Two websites were randomly selected from the three top editorial staff size filters used in the database (More than 40, 21 to 40, and 11 to 20). The six sites selected were the Center for Public Integrity, Politico, Slate, ProPublica, California Watch and the Texas Tribune. (You can read more about the study’s background in our introductory post here.)

Over the course of this study, a total of 14,048 articles were monitored. The percentage of bylines for males exceeded that of females at four out of the six sites. At both ProPublica and California Watch, there were more female bylines than male bylines, though by narrower margins than those of the sites were males outnumbered females. At ProPublica, the difference was only 1.1 percent.

The three websites with the highest numbers of articles published also had the smallest percentages of female bylines. At all three — Slate, Politico and the Texas Tribune — women were less than 30 percent of authors.

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Here are the breakdowns by website:

California Watch

  • Percent by women: 51.2%
  • Percent by men: 40.4%
  • Percent shared (both male and female authors): 4.6%
  • Percent by other*: 3.8%

A total of 369 articles were published in the California Watch RSS feed during this time period, an average of roughly 14 articles per week.

The Center for Public Integrity

  • Percent by women: 31.8%
  • Percent by men: 38.7%
  • Percent shared: 7.1%
  • Percent by other*: 22.4%

The Center for Public Integrity, or iWatch, published 522 articles in its RSS feed, an average of 20 articles per week. iWatch changed its name back to The Center for Public Integrity as of Aug. 19, 2012. Read about the change here. The relatively high percentage of “other” articles can be attributed to the second week in the study, when iWatch used a larger number of articles from wire services.

Politico – “2012 Live“

  • Percent by women: 27.1%
  • Percent by men: 62%
  • Percent shared:  5%
  • Percent by other*: 5.8%

Politico does not offer a general RSS feed so the “2012” RSS feed was selected for monitoring. During the 26 weeks of the study, Politico published an impressive 9,037 articles in this feed, averaging roughly 348 articles a week. This total does not include any dead links.

ProPublica

  • Percent by women: 43.8%
  • Percent by men: 42.7%
  • Percent shared: 9.5%
  • Percent by other*: 4%

ProPublica published the fewest articles of the set with 274, or 11 articles per week. ProPublica showed the biggest change from when we reported our findings from the first three months of this byline count. At that time, women wrote 50.4 percent of the articles and men wrote 37.6 percent. That gap has since narrowed.

The percentage of articles by women at ProPublica is higher than we found in our 2011 Gender Check study. That study looked at lead articles on news websites and found that women wrote only 30.8 percent of those articles monitored at ProPublica during the study’s time frame.

Slate

  • Percent by women: 29.4%
  • Percent by men: 63.3%
  • Percent shared: 4.2%
  • Percent by other*: 3.1%

Slate published 2,411 articles during the time frame, or approximately 93 articles per week.

Texas Tribune

  • Percent by women: 25.1%
  • Percent by men: 72.7%
  • Percent shared: 1.8%
  • Percent by other*: 0.4%

The Texas Tribune published 1,435 articles, or roughly 55 per week. Duplicate articles in the RSS feed were removed and not counted in the total so each article was only counted once.

*The other category includes articles that have no byline as well as those by staff and wire services.

Byline Report, Findings and Statistics, Our studiesbyline count, California Watch, Center for Public Integrity, gender gap, Politico, ProPublica, Slate, Texas Tribune, women in journalism
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  • Women in journalism: Reading list for 9/14/2014
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The Gender Report is a website that aims to monitor gender representations in online news. Contact us at genderreport@gmail.com. Follow @genderreport on Twitter.

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