How Women and People of Color Stack Up in Journalism

by Corinna Kirsch on June 5, 2015 · 14 comments Blurb

Female Journalist

The Women’s Media Center report “The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2015” gives some shitty stats about the place of women and people of color in journalism.

From the report, here’s the breakdown of employees at daily newspapers in the United States:

White men: 55.59 percent
White women: 31.1 percent
Hispanic men: 2.63 percent
Black men: 2.58 percent
Black women: 2.19 percent
Hispanic women: 1.83 percent
Asian women: 1.64 percent
Asian men: 1.51 percent
Native-American men: 0.23 percent
Multiracial men: 0.26 percent
Multiracial women: 0.27 percent
Native-American women: 0.16 percent

Pie charts aren't perfect, but just in case you want to visualize "journalist pie"...

Pie charts aren’t perfect, but just in case you want to visualize “journalist pie”…

As for writer-specific jobs, men represent 64.6 percent of supervisors and 61.9 percent of reporters and writers in newsrooms.

The verdict: In journalism, it’s still shitty to be anyone other than a white man.

Perhaps the universities and colleges producing journalism grads can help do something to promote their students? Oh, wait, another page from the Women’s Media Center report states that women graduating from these programs end up going into careers in public relations and advertising.

As hiring in journalism and mass communication levels off, female 2013 graduates of those programs continued, as other recent graduates have done, to choose careers in public relations and advertising over ones in news.

Signing off,

Corinna Kirsch
Senior Editor, Art F(eminism) City

the-critic-future

{ 14 comments }

Paddy Johnson June 5, 2015 at 2:43 pm

Are your comments some sort of ongoing fucked up art project?

Aaron Silverstein June 5, 2015 at 5:01 pm

X

Puzlcult June 6, 2015 at 4:12 pm

Just so I understand: Are the numbers of Black MALE journalists so low that it doesn’t even warrant listing them in the statistics? I’m confused…

Corinna Kirsch June 7, 2015 at 5:22 pm

Not my stats. I’d ask the women’s media center. But yes, see comment that it’s shitty to be anyone other than a white male.

Kalro Yonit June 7, 2015 at 5:30 pm

These ARE your stats. You have been called out on this multiple times and you delete the comments calling you out each time. Your pretending to be unaware of this is willful ignorance and absolute proof that you are practicing intellectual dishonesty.. skewing figures in your favor and blaming it on WMC. It has been explained repeatedly that the figures you used from the WMC do not match those on this page’s data table nor the pie chart. You first made what appears to be an error, skipping the ‘black male’ section, then willfully created a fictitious pie chart, and then willfully pretended like you aren’t aware of the situation, which is a lie, by evidence of all of the comments that were deleted. Puzicult, see the source code of this page, all of the comments are still there.

Corinna Kirsch June 7, 2015 at 7:26 pm

Rude and harmful comments are not helpful to treating people as people; they’re polarizing and troll-like. Ethically, I am against “yelling” online, although I believe in constructive debates. I would not “yell” at you online, nor would I yell at any of my students, employers, or…anyone. Bullying just isn’t cool.

I am not “pretending to be unaware” nor am I “practicing intellectual dishonesty” by “skewing figures”—I haven’t deleted your comments and I actually have no idea what you’re talking about. So to assume what my “will” is, is just off. I assume my editor has deleted any comments that might be found to be harmful, racist, or otherwise troll-like.

I did just realize that there is one stat missing. Okay. This was not done on purpose and it doesn’t change the tenor of the article—but I can fix it. That’s blogging!

Corinna Kirsch June 7, 2015 at 7:29 pm

Also, I had surgery on Friday, so that factor could very well contribute to accidentally not including one figure in a pie chart.

Wiley Braham June 6, 2015 at 10:32 pm

http://imgur.com/cYu0YCw why was this deleted?

Mental Math June 7, 2015 at 3:36 pm

Hmmm….
What happened to the Black Men? Are you trying to tell me there are no Black Men in journalism? Or that they merely aren’t worth “reporting” on…. Hmmmm
55.59 + 31.1 + 2.19 + 2.63 + 1.83 + 1.51 + 1.64 + 0.23 + 0.16 + 0.26 + 0.27 = 97.41

Take a look at your own Pie Chart. See anything Missing? Yup…….Black Men barely register as a statistic in our society, this report doesnt even give them that. Thanks a lot for bringint these issues to light. Yeah, Great Reporting. I mean seriously…. What’s 500 years of SLAVERY between friends? Thanks and hope we see a correction some day

Kalro Yonit June 7, 2015 at 4:19 pm

Does F in Art F City stand for the F you receive in Math

Kalro Yonit June 7, 2015 at 4:35 pm

reached out to some experts to solve this riddle. http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1316197/pie-chart-vales-dont-equal-100

metal math June 7, 2015 at 6:27 pm

At the top it says this Blog Post has 9 comments when really only 4 are left.
Bad Math Everywhere..

metal math June 7, 2015 at 6:27 pm

Whatever happened to Freedom of Speech, Huh?

It Just Doesn’t Add Up.

Puzlcult June 8, 2015 at 11:43 am

Thanks @Corinna Kirsch. I’m sorry there are posters who are uncivil in this forum. Keep your head up and keep doing a great job!

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