online news

Gender Checks show higher count of female bylines in fourth month, fewer female sources in fifth

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Though the fact that we missed some Gender Checks in the fourth and fifth months of this project may have slightly altered our results, overall between the two months women represented 25.7 percent of sources and 44.8 percent of bylines in the articles we monitored.

The percent of female authors in particular is significantly higher than what we found in our first three months of Gender Checks. During that time, women were 31 percent of authors. This difference is largely attributed to our fourth month (see findings below) in which for the first time in this study the number of female authors outnumbered the amount of males. That result may have been due to the fact that we missed several Gender Checks from the Northeast that month, and, of our four regions, it tends (at least as an average of our first three months) to return the lowest percentage of female bylines.

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites from that region — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. In doing so, we pulled the top articles on their websites at the time of the check and gathered 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.)

Here’s more detail on our findings of both sourcing and authorship from the two months broken down by geographic region and news site association:

Fourth Month: April 19 – May 20, 2011

We reviewed 32 articles, two in each Gender Check. This month we had five Gender Checks from the Midwest and South, four from the West and only two from the Northeast.

Sourcing

The articles contained 71 male sources and 31 female sources, which put women at about 30.4 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: 13 males, 6 female (Women at 31.6 percent)
  • Northeast: 15 males, 6 females (Women at 28.6 percent)
  • Midwest: 20 males, 13 females (Women at 39.4 percent)
  • South: 23 male, 6 female (Women at 20.7 percent)

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

  • Newspaper website: 41 males, 15 females (Women at 26.8 percent)
  • Online-only:  30 males, 16 females (Women at 34.8 percent)

Authorship

Overall, 16 articles were written by an individual woman and 12 by one or more man, which meant for the first time in this study there were more female than male authors. All geographic areas were fairly evenly split. As stated earlier in this post, this may not have been the case if we had completed an equal number of Gender Checks in the Northeast this month, as it has shown to have the lowest percentage of female bylines thus far in our study. In addition, four articles had a shared byline with a man and a woman.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 5 by an individual woman, 3 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 2 by a woman, 2 by a man
  • Midwest: 4 by a woman, 2 by a man, 4 by a man and a woman
  • South: 5 by a woman, 5 by a man

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

  • Newspaper website: 9 by a woman, 5 by a man, 2 by a man and a woman
  • Online-only: 7 by a woman, 7 by a man, 2 by a man and a woman

Fifth Month: May 24 – June 24, 2011

We reviewed 30 articles, two in each Gender Check. This month that included five Gender Checks from the West and Midwest, four in the Northeast and only one in the South. Keep in mind that the lack of Gender Checks from the South may have changed slightly our results overall. In the first quarter, the South had slightly higher percentages of women authors and sources than the other geographic regions.

Sourcing

The articles contained 62 male sources and 15 female sources, which put women at about 19.5 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This does not include sources whose gender was not identifiable (particularly unnamed sources with no pronoun modifiers, which we saw more often this month).

The Northeast and Midwest performed particularly poorly for women this month. Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 18 males, 7 female (Women at 28 percent)
  • Northeast: 19 males, 2 females (Women at 9.5 percent)
  • Midwest: 20 males, 3 females (Women at 13 percent)
  • South: 5 male, 3 female (Women at 37.5 percent)

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

  • Newspaper website: 37 males, 11 females (Women at 22.9 percent)
  • Online-only:  25 males, 4 females (Women at 13.9 percent)

Authorship

Overall, 10 articles were written by an individual woman and 20 by one or more man, which meant women were 33.3 percent of authors this month. There were no shared bylines.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 2 stories by an individual woman, 8 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 4 by a woman, 4 by a man
  • Midwest: 3 by a woman, 7 by a man
  • South: 1 by a woman, 1 by a man

For authorship, the number of female bylines newspaper sites and online-only sites matched this month. Here’s the look of what that meant in numbers:

  • Newspaper website: 5 by a woman, 10 by a man
  • Online-only: 5 by a woman, 10 by a man

A reminder for our readers: These results reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites (and in some cases, as in these past two months, not as consistently as we would have liked). Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category.

Database shows women as 28 percent of news sites’ principal staff

Jasmine R. Linabary2 Comments

Approximately 28 percent of the principal staff members at online news outlets are female, at least according to data pulled from the Columbia Journalism Review‘s database of online news sites.

The News Frontier Database is a collection of searchable data and write-ups on 125 outlets, with more added on a regular basis as they fit the criteria. It includes information on the type of coverage, staff sizes, revenue sources and content management systems of the sites along with written profiles and links to CJR coverage.

Most interesting to us was the “principal staff” listing for each outlet in the database. According to the survey news sites are requested to fill out for consideration to be added to the directory, CJR requests a list of the top editorial staff members and titles. It’s suggested news sites stick to naming three individuals, but the directory will include up to five. Sites have offered up names of one to five people who hold a variety of position titles from upper management to writers and contributors and those who do some of everything.

We pulled information from the database June 3 to get a general idea, based on what was provided, of how well women are represented among the positions news sites considered relevant and important to list as “principal staff.”  Aside from the overall finding that women represented 28 percent of those listed, here are some of the other interesting tidbits we discovered from looking at this data:

Missing gender

Most disturbing was the fact that 46.4 percent of the sites in the database had no female listed at all. A male was absent from the principal staff list on only 8.8 percent of sites.

There were a total of 125 sites on the day we pulled the data. Fifteen sites listed more women than men, while the database contained 84 sites where the number of men listed outnumbered the women (This includes those sites with no person of a certain gender listed).

Staff size

We also took a look at the data by editorial staff size. In the case of all 15 sites listed as having one editorial staff member, all of the singular principal staff members were male. One site listed both a male and a female (she was art director), though it was noted that the male was the only paid staff member. This seems to suggest that men are more likely than women to develop and run an online news outlet solo.

When the representation of men and women at the news sites was divided out by the range of editorial staff members, a trend emerged that appears to show women have greater representation among the principal staffs of smaller sites (the exception being the staff of one, see above) and increasingly less representation as the staffs get larger until it hits the “more than 40” range. Here’s how that plays out. For sites with the editorial staff specified, the following percent of principal staff members listed are female:

  • 2 to 5 editorial staff: 32.9 percent
  • 6 to 10 editorial staff: 31.3 percent
  • 11 to 20 editorial staff: 18.9 percent
  • 21 to 40 editorial staff: 9 percent
  • More than 40 editorial staff: 20 percent

Type of coverage

When it came to the type of coverage listed in the database entry, women had parity on hyperlocal sites and for those that covered education with representation hovering between 48 and 50 percent.

No women were included for sites with the type of coverage listed as ethnic, foreign, sports or transportation, though only a few sites from each at this point are included in the database.

Women represented 20 percent or less of the principal staffs for sites that covered business, politics, science and technology. In the case of politics, 11 of the 20 sites with that coverage type did not list a female principal staff member.

The remaining coverage areas — arts and culture, general and investigative — showed women at 26 to more than 34 percent of principal staffs, with investigative at the higher end.

Site location and coverage area

Women were better represented overall from sites identified with a particular state only rather than those that were considered national. Women made up 31.6 percent of the principal staff members listed at state-specific sites versus 20 percent of those from national sites.

Twenty-two of the 37 sites under “national” did not include a woman in their principal staff lists. Only one national site did not list a male and it covered arts and culture.

This information gathered from The News Frontier Database gives us just a glimpse of what the gender breakdowns at these online-only publications might be, at least in the positions considered to be key to the organizations.

To see how these results compare to other studies as well as information we’ve gathered, view our posts on findings and statistics. Additional research on women’s representation in the news media, can be found on our “Useful Resources” page.

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.