byline count – Page 7 – The Gender Report

Introducing the Byline Report

July 11, 2012September 19, 2012Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Welcome to our Byline Report, a project aimed at surveying authorship at online news websites.

Research has long demonstrated a gender gap in who writes and produces the news, but less is still known about how it has materialized online.

The Global Media Monitoring Project (2010), which included websites for the first time, found that women reported 36 percent of stories from the online news sites of 16 countries. The OpEd Project included two online news sites among the 10 it examined for its byline survey — Huffington Post and Salon. Based on their findings, men wrote 64 percent of articles at the Huffington Post and 78 percent at Salon.

In our own year-long Gender Check study, women reported 32.2 percent of lead articles on the eight websites monitored. The four online-only sites had slightly fewer female bylines at 30.5 percent compared to 33.9 at newspaper websites.

The current study

The present study aims to continue these efforts by examining the byline counts from further online news outlets to enhance our understanding of any gender gap.

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 project began July 1, 2012. RSS feeds are used for monitoring articles published from each site. A main or all news RSS feed is being used wherever possible. The exception is Politico, for which the “2012” RSS feed was selected for monitoring.

Articles are monitored for a Sunday through Saturday week and findings will be released in a simple report the following Wednesday. The report will include percentages (rounded to the nearest 10th of a percent) of female and male bylines from each site, as well as the shared and staff/wire bylines. It is important to note that a single week should not be considered as indicative of a site’s gender breakdown, which is why we’ll also be looking at and sharing trends that emerge over time. In the future, we’ll also look to compare the byline breakdowns to staff breakdowns to see if any differences exist.

Counts like these serve several purposes. They are useful monitoring tools to gather and track information about representations in media. They can also draw attention to any disparities and, as a result, spur discussions about why they may exist. We hope to contribute to larger discussions about women’s representation in the media through this study.

Meet the Sites

The following are the six sites selected for the study and some brief details on them. This post can serve as a reference throughout the study.

iWatch News (The Center for Public Integrity) – This is a non-profit investigative site with a national coverage area. It is the only site in the current study that had at a woman listed among its principal staff members reported in the database (See our previous examination of news sites’ principal staff here). Its principal staff members included one man and one woman (www.iwatchnews.org)
Politico – This is a for-profit site covering national politics. All three of its principal staff members listed are male. (www.politico.com)
ProPublica – This is also a non-profit investigative site with a national coverage area. All three of its principal staff members listed are male. (propublica.org)
Slate – This is a for-profit general interest site. Its two principal staff members are male. (www.slate.com)
California Watch – This is a non-profit investigative website covering California. The database reports one male principal staff member for this site. (californiawatch.org)
Texas Tribune – This is a non-profit site covering politics in Texas. Its two principal staff members are male. (texastribune.org)

Keep up with the study by visiting our “Byline Report” page. For more information on gender representations in online news, check out “Findings and Statistics.” Additional research on women’s representation in the news media, can be found on our “Useful Resources” page.

Have questions or suggestions? Let us know in the comment section or by emailing genderreport[@]gmail.com.

Men still dominate opinion writing

May 31, 2012May 29, 2013Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

The OpEd Project Byline Survey — Click here to go to The OpEd Project’s 2011 Byline Survey

Men still dominate opinion writing across legacy and new media, according to a report released this week from The OpEd Project.

The OpEd Project, whose mission is to increase the diversity of voices in public debate, released a byline survey of opinion articles from a 12-week period in 2011. The survey included 7,000 articles at 10 media outlets, including legacy (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post), new (Huffington Post and Salon) and college (Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale) media.

Not surprising, college media had the highest number of female bylines out of the three groups at 38 percent. However, one would expect that number to be even higher considering women have been the majority of journalism students for decades.

Women also had more op-ed bylines in new media (33 percent) than legacy media (20 percent). This is particularly interesting because our study as well as the Global Media Monitoring Project found slightly fewer female bylines at online news sites than traditional media. In the 2010 Global Media Monitoring Project, only a small difference was found as overall 37 percent of stories were reported by women while 36 percent of stories in the online samples were bylined by women. Also, our 2011 Gender Check study (though admittedly with a much smaller sample size) found women had 33.9 percent of bylines at newspaper websites and 30.5 percent at online-only news websites. This definitely demonstrates there is need for further study and comparison, which is part of The Gender Report’s mission. The OpEd Project did note that there have been some improvements in the number of female bylines from 6 years ago.

Also noteworthy, The OpEd Project examined the subjects of the op-ed pieces by women. Women wrote the most in both legacy and new media about what the report dubbed “Pink Topics.” These were considered topics that have traditionally been considered the female “ghetto” in journalism including the “four F’s” (food, family, furniture and fashion). It also included articles on women-focused subject matter (for instance “woman-specific health or culture”), gender/women’s issues, and profiles of women for which gender is a “significant” issue.

Response and Reaction

Several blogs and organizations picked up on the report including Poynter and the Huffington Post. Often shared was Erika Fry’s piece from the Columbia Journalism Review, which puts the numbers in context and examines some of the related issues.

J. Bryan Lowder at the XX Factor questioned what was categorized as “Pink Topics,” suggesting it can perpetuate stereotypes by making it unclear what distinguishes between “women specific health and culture” and “serious” political topics.

Following the release, Poynter held a live chat on how to crack journalism’s glass ceiling. In addition to Mallary Tenore and Joe Grimm from Poynter, the chat featured Barbara Selvin, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism, who has recently written blog posts about the lack of women in journalism.

Additionally, stories noted that a panel was held Tuesday titled Throw Like A Girl: Pitching the Hell Out of Your Stories, put together by Her Girl Friday. This panel, according to Jillian Keenan at Poynter, encouraged women to gain confidence and overcome their fear of rejection. However, Jen Doll at The Atlantic Wire cautioned attributing the lack of female bylines to an issue of confidence, saying it continues to put the blame on women and is perhaps oversimplifying the issue.

This survey and others like it continue to raise awareness about the gender gap in journalism, but as Doll notes, “knowing these stats is only half the battle.”

–It’s 2012 already: why is opinion writing still mostly male? (Columbia Journalism Review)

–Study: More women writing op-eds, but female bylines still cluster around ‘pink topics’ (Poynter)

–The Problem with “Pink Topics” (XX Factor)

–Men Still Dominating Bylines In Journalism: Report (Huffington Post)

–How to pitch (stories) like a girl (Poynter)

–Do Female Journalists Have a Confidence Problem? (The Atlantic Wire)

–How can we help crack journalism’s glass ceiling? (Poynter)

–New study: “major improvements” in women’s op-ed representation, but more remains to be done (Feministing)

–More Women are Writing Op-Eds, but They’re – Sigh – ‘Pink’ (Jezebel)

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

Women in journalism: Reading list 3/11/12

March 11, 2012March 27, 2012Jasmine 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

–Safety of women journalists on the frontline highlighted in new book (The Guardian) – For more related links, see our post on “No Woman’s Land”

–A Byline Count for the Next Generation: How Diverse Are the Blogs and Magazines Most Millennials Read? (GOOD)

–Twenty inspirational women journalists: A list of inspiring female journalists to mark International Women’s Day (Journalism.co.uk)

–International Women’s Day: Remembering the Murdered Women Writers of Mexico (Huffington Post UK)

–How Journalists Can Celebrate Women’s Day (10,000 Words)

–UNESCO launches Women Make the News 2012 (Press release)

–The Daily Beast’s ‘150 Fearless Women’ List Features Media Figures (Huffington Post Media)

–$56,000 Awarded to Four Women-Led News Projects (McCormick Foundation New Media Women Entrepreneurs)

–Naked ambition: Bild drops Page One Girl in bid for women readers (The Guardian)

–Nielsen: Women make up the majority of bloggers (ZDNet)

–Women underrepresented in tech jobs (Poynter)

–Few Female Bylines in Major Magazines (Columbia Journalism Review)

–How NPR Became a Hotbed for Female Journalists (Newsweek)

–In journalism, these women paved the way (Montreal Gazette)

–2012 Golden Pen of Freedom Awarded to Mexican Journalist Anabel Hernández (WAN-IFRA)

–TV Anchor Sue Simmons Is Being Dropped by WNBC (New York Times)

-WIW12: As Journalists Become Targets, the Need to ‘Bear Witness’ Continues (Conversation with Lynsey Addario at WIW12 via The Daily Beast)

-WIW12: New York Times’ Jill Abramson: “In our newsroom, nearly 40 percent of senior editors and managers are women, and then, of course, there’s me.” (Panel discussion at WIW12 via The Daily Beast

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

Women in journalism: Reading list 3/4/12

March 4, 2012March 15, 2012Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

VIDA: The 2011 count

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts released its 2011 count of male and female bylines at top magazines, showing a disparity in the number of female book reviewers and books by women that are reviewed compared to men. Web writers and journalists alike took notice of this release. Here are just a few of the related write-ups and responses:

–Gender bias in books journalism remains acute, research shows (The Guardian)

–Where in the world are women? Still not being published or reviewed, says VIDA (New York Daily News)

–America’s Top Magazines: Still Not Hiring Women (Think Progress)

–Half of MoJo’s Bylines Are Women’s (Mother Jones)

–Thought Leadership by Gender, as Reflected in Bylines (by Ann Friedman)

–Institutional sexism of books world needs new girls’ network (by Jennifer Weiner)

–Do Women Count? (by E.J. Graff)

–Ten Women Major Magazines Should Be Commissioning (by Alyssa Rosenberg)