female bylines

Gender Check breakdown: A look at female authors, sources by article subject

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Is there a difference in the representation of women as sources and authors based on the subject of the article?

This is a question we’d been asking ourselves. We did look at the issue of coverage type when we examined the number of female principal staff members for online news sites through the Columbia Journalism Review’s News Frontier Database and found differences, but we’d yet to address it through our article monitoring.

Since marking six months of our Gender Check monitoring project and releasing our initial findings at the end of July, we’ve had a chance to spend some more time with our data and look at it from different angles, including this one.

We went back through our findings and looked at each of the 190 article we gender checked by topic. To have a basis of comparison as well as a some-what standardized approach, we opted to use (to the best of our ability) the Global Media Monitoring Project‘s news stories classification system (Click for a PDF of the system). This system divides articles into eight categories with a numbering system for further breakdowns within each category. Due to the number of articles in our sample at this time, we’ve opted just to look at the representation of women in each of the main categories, though we hope to look at further divisions in the future. None of our articles fell under the categories of “Other” and ‘The Girl-Child,” so we’ll just be sticking to the six remaining categories.

In terms of the subject classification of the articles we monitored in the first six months of our Gender Check project, the largest number fell under “Crime and Violence” (62 out of 190). That was followed by “Politics and Government” (41), “Economy” (38), “Social and Legal” (24), “Science and Health” (16) and “Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports” (9).

Within those categories, here’s what we found:

Sourcing

The classification with the lowest percentage of female sources was “Social and Legal” at 19.8 percent followed closely by “Politics and Government” at 20.2 percent. The highest percentage of female sources went to “Science and Health” at 30.4 percent.

Here’s the breakdown by classification:

  • Politics and Government: 142 males, 36 females (Women as 20.2 percent)
  • Economy: 100 males, 34 females (Women as 25.4 percent)
  • Science and Health: 55 males, 24 females (Women as 30.4 percent)
  • Social and Legal: 73 males, 18 females (Women as 19.8 percent)
  • Crime and Violence: 180 males, 73 females (Women as 28.9 percent)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 22 males, 9 females (Women as 29 percent)

Authorship

Even though they had the highest percentage of female sources, “Science and Health” articles did not fair well when it came to female bylines. Articles in this classification had the lowest percentage of female authors at 25 percent. The closest to byline parity was in “Economy” where females made up 44.7 percent of authors.

Here’s how it separated out by classification:

  • Politics and Government: 15 stories by women, 23 by men, 3 shared bylines between a man and a woman (Women as 36.6 percent)
  • Economy: 17 by women, 21 by men (Women as 44.7 percent)
  • Science and Health: 4 by women, 11 by men, 1 shared (Women as 25 percent)
  • Social and Legal: 9 by women, 13 by men, 2 shared (Women as 37.5 percent)
  • Crime and Violence: 18 by women, 35 by men, 8 shared, 1 by contributors (Women as 29 percent)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 3 by women, 6 by men (Women as 33.3 percent)

We’ll be continuing to watch for trends that emerge in subject areas over time as our study progresses. We’d like to hear from you. What did you find most interesting or surprising about these results? What are you curious to know?

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

Report Your Thoughts: Where are the women? (Part 1)

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: Our findings through our monitoring projects have served to identify and bring attention to the fact that women’s voices are missing, but have left us with more questions than answers. That’s why we’re taking our project a step further by starting a discussion on why this is the case and what can be done about it. This is part of a series of posts each week aiming to start a discussion on gender representations in online news. View past “Report Your Thoughts” discussions here.

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Question 1: Where are the women (in bylines and in the newsroom)?

We’d like to start off our discussions with the most basic question about our findings: Why? Why are women present in such low numbers in our byline counts of lead articles as well as our looks inside newsrooms?

Since the late 1970s, women have made up the majority of college journalism majors, but that has yet to transfer over to the industry itself.

Here are some facts:

– The American Society of News Editors’ 2011 Newsroom Census found that women made up 36.9 percent of those working full time at daily U.S. newspapers. That percentage has fluctuated only slightly since the study began in 1999.

-The Global Media Monitoring Project (2010) found that overall in a study of media platforms from 100 countries that 37 percent of stories were reported by women. That percentage was 36 percent in the monitoring of online news sites from 16 countries.

-At the six-month mark, we’ve found that women wrote 37.7 percent of the lead articles on the online news sites in our Gender Check study if articles with no bylines and those with shared bylines between a man and a woman are taken out of the equation, but 34.7 percent when those are included. Among the top discussed and linked to articles around the web via the New Media Index, they bylined 31.3 percent of articles by authors or one gender or the author and only 26.3 percent overall in the first six months of 2011. In our look at the principal staff members of online-only news sites in the News Frontier Database, we discovered that women hold only 28 percent of these positions.

There have been many reasons and factors associated with this absence of women from newsrooms and among lead bylines, but we want to hear from you. What do you make of these findings. Why is this the case? If you are a woman with a background or training in journalism but are not currently working in the field, we want to know your story.

We invite you to share your thoughts as well as any personal stories here in the comment section as well as on Twitter with the hashtag #GRdiscuss or on our Facebook discussion board.

So, where are the women?

Update: We’ll also note that the International Women’s Media Foundation’s  “The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media”  that came out in March uncovered similar trends in its look at nearly 60 countries and more than 500 companies (Read our past post on this study here). The study found that 73 percent of the top management jobs were occupied by men. Overall, women held 36 percent of reporter positions.

Update 2: Much of the discussion for this week’s question took place on Twitter using the hashtag #GRdiscuss. A few people and groups participated by sharing their thoughts on the question as well as comments and links on women’s representation in the media in general. Many more retweeted parts of the discussion.

The most retweeted was one of my own comments on the subject:

Here’s a sample of some of the other highlights:

To view more tweets in the discussion, search the #GRdiscuss hashtag on Twitter. You can still join the discussion and share your thoughts by commenting below.

Getting the discussion started: Gender representations in online news

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Is your voice being represented in the news? Odds are, if you’re a woman, probably not. Women make up 50.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the most recent census, but when it comes to representation in the news they are present in much lower numbers.

The presence of women is what we’ve been attempting to calculate here at The Gender Report, particularly when it comes to the emergent platform of online news. Thus far, we’ve found that among lead articles on online news sites, both those associated with a newspaper and those that are online-only, women make up only 25.3 percent of sources. That percentage drops lower when we look at the most linked to and discussed articles of the web in the New Media Index in which women are only 20.2 percent of sources.

And, when it comes to producing online news, women haven’t reached parity there either. Our counts have found that once articles with no bylines and those with shared bylines between a man and a woman are taken out of the equation, women wrote 37.7 percent of the lead articles on the online news sites in our study. Of the top articles around the web, they bylined 31.3 percent. They are also absent among the principal staff members of online-only news sites, filling 28 percent of these positions, based on our look at the News Frontier Database.

These numbers, while serving to identify and bring attention to the fact that women’s voices are missing, present us with more questions than answers. That’s why we’d like to take our project a step further by starting a discussion on why this is the case and what can be done about it.

For the next several weeks, we’ll be posting discussion questions here on our website with the tag “Report Your Thoughts” as well as through Facebook and Twitter (using the hashtag #GRdiscuss). We hope you’ll get involved by sharing your thoughts and comments on questions like: Where are the women? Why does it matter? What’s the solution? And who’s working toward change?

Join us in this conversation. Let’s get the discussion started.

Equal number of male, female bylines in July New Media Index but low female source count

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The top linked to and discussed articles on the web showed an equal number of male and female bylines in July, the first month that’s happened this year. However, this was coupled with one of the lower showings for female sources.

Since January, we’ve been monitoring the top articles based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups. These chronicle the top five linked to and discussed news stories and opinion pieces around the web in a Monday to Friday week based on commentary on blogs and social media sites. We’ve chosen to focus on the main top five in the blogosphere.

When more than one link was provided on the topic, we’ve monitored the first mentioned or the one that appears based on the writing to be more dominant, unless it is specifically mentioned that two articles shared the attention for that particular subject.

Earlier this month, we released our findings from six month’s worth of monitoring. During that time, women made up 20.2 percent of sources and with 31.3 percent of bylines (of articles by a person or several of one gender or the other, not including shared bylines between a woman and a man).

Female authors surpassed that percentage in July, reaching parity, but women turned up less often as sources. Here’s what we found specifically in the past month:

July 2011

PEJ New Media Index: July 25-29, 2011

Between July 4 and July 29, the New Media Index included 19 articles that could be checked. Five links were provided for each week, but one week the No. 1 subject on Carmageddon was linked to a page of all of the coverage on the topic and not a specific article.

Here’s what was uncovered:

  • Women were 15 percent of sources in this month’s articles. The articles contained 51 male sources and only nine female sources. Thirteen out of the 19 articles contained only male sources.
  • This month seven articles were written or produced by men and seven articles were written by women. Two were by both a man or two and a woman and three were not bylined or written by staff.
  • Three of the top linked-to articles were opinion pieces. Two were by male authors and one was a shared byline with a man and a woman.

All the links this month except for one came from the LA Times, with the one coming from the BBC.

For past months’ findings as well as other statistics on gender and the online news, visit our findings and statistics page or view our six-month recap of all of our projects and studies here.

Recap: A look at The Gender Report’s first six months in numbers

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: Six months ago, we set out to look at how women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our progress, this week we’re reviewing our findings as well as unveiling new statistics based on what we’ve uncovered thus far in a series of posts. View other six-month coverage here.

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We’ve spent the past six months looking at gender in Internet news through our own studies and as well as those by others. To review what we’ve accomplished in that time and what it says about the state of women in online journalism, we’ve pulled together our stats through a roundup list as well as some graphs (Scroll below the slideshow for the full list of stats plus links). Here’s our refresher as well as a great way to check out our work if you’re new to The Gender Report.

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Gender Checks

Through our weekly Gender Checks, which started the week of Jan. 18 and were our cornerstone study, we’ve looked at a total of eight U.S. news websites (one associated with a traditional newspaper and another that is online-only), two from each of the four geographic regions. In that study, we’ve thus far found the following:

–Month 1: Women as 27.6 percent of sources and with 32.3 percent of bylines (of articles by a person or several of one gender or the other, not including shared bylines between a woman and a man)
–Month 2: Women as 20.8 percent of sources and with 33.3 percent of bylines
–Month 3: Women as 23.5 percent of sources and with 26.9 percent of bylines
–First quarter totals: Women as 24.6 percent of sources and with 31 percent of bylines
–Month 4: Women as 30.4 percent of sources and with 57.1 percent of bylines
–Month 5: Women as 19.5 percent of sources and with 33.3 percent of bylines
–Month 6: Women as 27 percent of sources and with 43.3 percent of bylines
–Six month totals: Women as 25.3 percent of sources and with 37.7 percent of bylines (34.7% overall)

New Media Index

In addition, we’ve also been examining the sourcing and authorship from the most linked to and talked about articles on the web, via the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index:

–January 2011: Women as 21.3 percent of sources and with 33.3 percent of bylines (of articles by a person or several of one gender or the other, not including shared bylines between a woman and a man)
–February 2011: Women as 28 percent of sources and with 41.7 percent of bylines
–March 2011: Women as 15.2 percent of sources and with 28.6 percent of bylines
–April 2011: Women as 25 percent of sources and with 28.6 percent of bylines
–May 2011: Women as 13.3 percent of sources and with 11.1 percent of bylines
–June 2011: Women as 20.2 percent of sources and with 36 percent of bylines
–Six months: Women as 20.2 percent of sources and with 31.3 percent of bylines (26.3 percent overall)

News Frontier Database

We’ve also spent some time looking at the information that can be gleaned through or as an off-shoot of the Columbia Journalism Review’s News Frontier Database.

  • Women made up 28 percent of the “principal staff” of online news outlets (as of June 3, 2011)
  • Women were 22 percent of sources and bylined 30 percent of articles overall in a July 1 sample of the lead articles from the 40 “national” online news outlets in the database.

The Gender Report got a shout-out for these studies from Michael Meyer who is in charge of the database during an interview he did with the media blog 10,000 Words in July.

Newsroom staff breakdowns

To look at gender representations in news creation in a different way aside from a byline count, we’ve been taking stock of the breakdown in each newsroom of the news sites included in our Gender Check monitoring via their online staff lists:

West:

  • Seattle Times: Women as 45.5 percent of staff.
  • Seattle P-I: Women as 30 percent of staff.

Midwest:

  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Women as 31.3 percent of staff.
  • St. Louis Beacon: Women as 60 percent of staff.

*Data from the Northeast and the South still to come.

Author gender and source selection

With our six-month statistics in hand as well as those from our monitoring of the 40 sites located nationally in the News Frontier Database, we decided also to look at whether the author’s gender affected the use of female sources. Here’s what each of these studies showed:

–News Frontier Database “national site study: Women were 38 percent of sources in articles by females and 10 percent of sources in articles by males. Women were 37 percent of sources in those articles with a shared byline by a male and a female.

–New Media Index study: Women were 28.9 percent of sources in articles by females and 19.3 percent of sources in articles by males. Women were only 11.9 percent of sources in articles with a shared byline by a male (or several) and a female.

–Gender Check study: Women were 28.1 percent of sources in articles by females and 21.8 percent of sources in articles by males. Women were 33 percent of sources in articles with a shared byline by a male (or several) and a female.

This issue is one that we’ll continue to look at in the future, particularly because of the differences we are seeing in the shared bylines.

Other studies

For a comparison, here’s what some other studies on the subject of women and journalism (some specifically related to newspapers and some to online outlets) have uncovered:

American Society of News Editors

2011 Newsroom Census: Women made up 36.9 percent of those working full time at daily U.S. newspapers.

International Women’s Media Foundation’s “The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media” (Released March 2011)

Women currently hold 27 percent of top management jobs and 26 percent of governing jobs in the news media globally.

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.

Global Media Monitoring Project (2010)

Overall, 37 percent of stories were reported by women, and 36 percent of stories in the online samples were bylined by women.

Women were 24 percent of news subjects – people heard or read on traditional platforms like newspapers, television and radio in the sample. They were 23 percent of news subjects in the websites monitored.

Our take

Check back on The Gender Report tomorrow (Saturday) for our take on what we’ve learned so far and what we hope to look at in our next six months.