New Media Index

Recap: A look at The Gender Report’s first year by the numbers

February 5, 2012March 11, 2012Jasmine R. Linabary1 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.

—–

During our first year of operation, we spent time looking at representations of sex and gender in Internet news through our own studies and as well as those by others. To review what we’ve accomplished and what it says about the state of women in online journalism, we’ve updated our effort at the six-month mark to pull 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 recap as well as a good way to check out our work if you are new to The Gender Report.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Gender Checks

Through our weekly Gender Checks, which started the week of Jan. 18 and were our cornerstone study, we 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 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
–Three month 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)
–Month 7: Women as 24.6 percent of sources and with 35 percent of bylines
–Month 8: Women as 24.3 percent of sources and with 44.8 percent of bylines
–Month 9: Women as 27 percent of sources and with 25 percent of bylines
–Nine month totals: Women as 25.3 percent of sources and with 41.9 percent of bylines
–Month 10: Women as 25.5 percent of sources and with 29 percent of bylines
–Month 11: Women as 34.4 percent of sources and with 31.8 percent of bylines
–Month 12: Women as 24.4 percent of sources and with 27.3 percent of bylines
–One year totals: Women as 26 percent of sources and with 35.3 percent of bylines (32.2 percent overall)

In addition to the basic findings related female sources and authors from this study’s monitoring, we also have explored the role of the articles’ subject and of source order as it relates to gender representation. See the links provided below:

Article subject:

-Six months: Gender Check breakdown: A look at female authors, sources by article subject
-Nine months: Science and health articles showing high female sources, low female bylines
-One year: One year: A look at female authors, sources by article subject in Gender Check study

Source order:

-Six months: Gender Check breakdown: A look at source order and gender
-One year: One year: Examining the prominence of female sources in Gender Check study

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)
–July 2011: Women as 15 percent of sources and with 50 percent of bylines
–August 2011: Women as 14.1 percent of sources and with 10 percent of bylines
–September 2011: Women as 17.6 percent of sources and with 9.5 percent of bylines
–October 2011: Women as 25 percent of sources and with 15 percent of bylines
–November 2011: Women as 27.2 percent of sources and with 10.5 percent of bylines
–December 2011: Women as 15 percent of sources and with 10 percent of bylines
–One year: Women as 19.1 percent of sources and with 23 percent of bylines (19.6 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: (As of May 25, 2011)

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

Midwest: (As of June 22, 2011)

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

We’ve also looked at whether the author’s gender affected the use of female sources in our different studies. 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 25.1 percent of sources in articles by females and 18.1 percent of sources in articles by males. Women were only 16.7 percent of sources in articles with a shared byline by a male (or several) and a female.

–Gender Check study: Women were 28.3 percent of sources in articles by females and 24 percent of sources in articles by males. Women were 28.7 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 for our take on what we’ve learned during our first year and what we hope to accomplish in the second.

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

January 31, 2012June 5, 2012Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

—–

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.

December’s New Media Index count results in low female bylines, sources

January 29, 2012February 13, 2012Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

—–

A low article count in December’s monitoring of the New Media Index resulted in few female bylines and sources.

December’s monitoring marked a full year of monitoring the top articles of the web based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups. Findings from the year will be released later this week.

For some background, the New Media Index reports the top five news stories and opinion pieces around the web in a Monday to Friday week based on commentary on blogs and social media sites. For the purposes of our study, we’ve focused on the top five in the blogosphere. When more than one link was provided on the topic, we’ve tried to monitor the first mentioned or the one that appears based on the writing to be more dominant, unless it is mentioned that articles shared the attention for that particular subject.

Here’s what we found in the 12th month:

December 2011

: PEJ New Media Index: December 26-30, 2011

Between Dec. 5 and Dec. 30, the New Media Index included only 11 articles that could be checked. No report was released for the week of Dec. 12-16. The same review of the Asus Transformer Prime appeared in all three weeks in which there were reports. In the week of Dec. 5-9, no link was provided for the No. 5 topic of the 2012 presidential race. Likewise, no link was offered for the No. 5 story of drunk history humor video in the week of Dec. 19-23.

In the stories we monitored, here’s what we found:

Women were 15 percent of sources in December’s articles. The articles contained 17 male sources and 3 female sources.
Only 3 of the 11 articles contained human sources. Two of those three had only male sources. The vast majority of the sources came from one article, the only by a female author.
One post was written or produced by a woman while nine articles were by a man. One company post did not identify a specific author.

This low number of sources overall and small percentage of female bylines has been a trend since the New Media Index’s methodology underwent changes in August. As we’ve mentioned previously, these changes included 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’ve also continued to notice changes in link diversity (particularly from blogs) and in topics, with more technology topics making it into the top five.

Up next

Check back later this week for the results of our year-long study of the New Media Index. We’ll be comparing the findings from August forward to those for the earlier part of the year to more clearly see the differences as a result of the change in the New Media Index’s methodology.

To look at past months’ findings as well as other statistics on gender and the online news, visit our findings and statistics page.

Looking back: Top posts of the year

January 24, 2012February 19, 2012Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

This month marks a year since we founded The Gender Report. We’re taking a brief pause from our regular content this week while we gear up for our week-long celebration starting Jan. 29, in which we’ll share findings and commentary from our year-long studies and projects. In the meantime, review what we’ve been up to for the past 12 months by checking out the top five most read posts from our first year.

1. Where are the women in the Romenesko discussion?

Our most read post this year came in November 2011, when journalism industry icon Jim Romenesko resigned. We looked at the gender breakdown of those commenting on, discussing or writing about this announcement and the preceding allegations by the Poynter Institute.

2. Women breaking journalism’s glass ceiling: The ascent of Jill Abramson and others

This Week in Review from June 2011 highlighted women who were moving up the ranks in journalism. This included the announcement that Jill Abramson would be the new executive editor of The New York Times, the first woman to fill that spot in the paper’s 160-year history.

3. Week in Review: Women journalists in the news

The No. 3 post was a Week in Review from December 2011 in which we provided a round-up of stories about women in journalism ranging from the treatment of female journalists abroad to recent studies and discussions about women in newsroom leadership.

4. New study: Women hold less than one-third of top news media jobs

Our write-up on the International Women’s Media Foundation’s “The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media” was our fourth most popular post. The study, which looked at more than 500 companies in nearly 60 countries, was released in March 2011.

5. Examining gender representations in the New Media Index

The introduction of our year-long study monitoring articles in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index was our fifth most read post. This write-up included findings from the first four months of the study. Final results on the full year of this project will be released next week.

New Media Index: Findings from October, November show slight increase in female sources, bylines

December 29, 2011February 4, 2012Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Catching up from October and November, our monitoring saw slight gains in the percentage of female sources and bylines in the News Media Index after all-time lows in September and August.

Since January 2011, the Gender Report has been monitoring the top articles of the web based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups. The New Media Index reports the top five 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 opted to focus on the top five in the blogosphere for the purpose of our study. When more than one link was provided on the topic, we’ve tried to monitor the first mentioned or the one that appears based on the writing to be more dominant, unless it is mentioned that articles shared the attention for that particular subject.

Here’s what we found for the months of October and November:

October 2011

Between Oct. 3 and Oct. 28, the New Media Index included 22 articles that could be checked. No specific link was provided for the No. 2 story on the 2012 presidential election in week four. The No. 3 story of week three on Occupy Wall Street was done as a special report, and therefore had no link provided. Similar to what was seen in September, news about the new iPhone appeared every week in the top five, though different stories or blog posts were referenced.

In the stories we monitored, here’s what we found:

Women were 25 percent of sources in October’s articles. The articles contained 18 male sources and 6 female sources.
Thirteen of the 22 articles contained no human sources. Nearly all of those links were to blog posts or posts from companies. In addition, five articles featured only male sources and one article featured only a female source.
Three articles or posts were written or produced by a woman while 17 articles were by one or more man. That means women wrote 15 percent of articles or posts by authors of one gender or the other. One article was by a male and female and one was by staff.

November 2011

: PEJ New Media Index: Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2011

Between Oct. 31 and Dec. 2, the New Media Index included 23 articles that could be checked. No New Media Index report was released for the week of Nov. 14 to 18. Again the new iPhone or Apple products were in the news every week.

Here’s what we found in the stories that we monitored:

In this month’s articles, women were 27.2 percent of sources. The articles contained 16 male sources and 6 female sources.
Seventeen of the 23 articles, or 73.9 percent, contained no human sources. As has been found previously, all of those links were either to blog posts or posts from companies. Also, two articles featured only male sources.
This month only two articles or posts were written or produced by a woman while 17 articles were by one or more man. In other words, women wrote 10.5 percent of articles or posts by authors of one gender or the other. Two articles had shared bylines between multiple males and females, one was by staff and one article’s author was not identified.

We only have one month to go in our year-long study of the New Media Index. We’ll be comparing the findings from August forward to those for the earlier part of the year to more clearly see the differences as a result of the change in the New Media Index’s methodology.

As we’ve discussed previously, August marked some changes to the New Media Index’s methodology, including the use of more sites to track the top stories as well as using a larger sample size and range of sources. (Read more about those change and the process here.) As a result, we’ve continued to notice changes in link diversity (particularly from blogs) and in topics, with more technology topics making it into the top five. So far this has meant a decrease in the number of sources and the percentage of female bylines.

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.