MSM Diversity

This is kind of outdated, but this website from the era of Susan Estrich's beef with Michael Kinsley over women's representation in the LA Times opinion section has some data on gender diversity in the MSM that seems to me to suggest that the blogosphere is probably somewhat less skewed. Of course, the total number of people with elite op-ed columns gigs is so small that minor changes make a big difference. Thanks to Gail Collins' addition to the roster The New York Times has now doubled the number of women with regular columns on the op-ed page. Seven of the Eight Elect are white, but one African-American columnist out of eight actually means that blacks are slightly overrepresented relative to their share of the population.

The Post op-ed roster is more confusing but seems to include a smaller proportion of women and blacks than does the Times. Neither paper includes any Hispanic columnists.

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher looks more closely at the blogosphere and sees many more women in top positions than Ellen Goodman found. It occurred to me that I don't actually have any idea how many of the DailyKos frontpagers are women. McJoan is and MissLaura is, but it just occurred to me that I'd kind of been assuming that "BarbinMD" is a woman because "Barbin" sounds like "Barbara" and Barbara is a woman's name even though, obviously, that line of reasoning doesn't make any sense. You can, of course, look it up and it turns out that BarbinMD actually is a woman named Barbara. I don't, however, actually make a habit of looking up the "real" names being people's pseudonyms.

Comments

Any chance of the Atlantic getting a non-male, non-white blogger?

Posted by William Burns | August 11, 2007 3:31 PM

Re William Burns

Mr. Yglesias perhaps qualifies as a Hispanic.

Re New York Times columnists

Unfortunately, one of those female NYT columnists is the imbecile Maureen Dowd. Poor, very poor.

Posted by SLC | August 11, 2007 3:36 PM

it just occurred to me that I'd kind of been assuming that "BarbinMD" is a woman because "Barbin" sounds like "Barbara" and Barbara is a woman's name even though, obviously, that line of reasoning doesn't make any sense.

I'd assumed that it was "Barb in MD." And it is!

Anyway, it looks like 6/17 of the people on the dKos masthead are women; with a little Googling, Darksyde seems to be a man, Dana Houle is a man, Page van der Linden is a woman.

Posted by Matt Weiner | August 11, 2007 4:44 PM

On dkos diversity:

Kos is Latino. I was a dkos FPer, and am Latino. Steve Soto, not sure, but Soto makes me think Latino. Meter Blades is part Seminole, half I think, part African American. The late Steve Gilliard was African-American.

On the gender front, A Gilas Girl, former FPer, is a woman. Georgia10, Joan, Barb, SusanG, Laura and Page are women.

White men include DH, Hunter, Trapper John, DavidNYC, DarkSyde, DemfromCt, and Billmon.

That is a pretty diverse group.

Posted by Armando | August 11, 2007 4:59 PM

Any chance of the Atlantic getting a non-male, non-white blogger?

You're getting one of two, which is probably asking enough of the Atlantic

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 11, 2007 6:21 PM

Matt,

Ellen Goodman has spawned a large discussion of a phenomenon that may or may not actually exist. Let's see the evidence of the claim before moving on to an analysis of how it happened or what it means. So far, we know that some graduate student she knows has a 90-line spreadsheet proving all kinds of statistics about the "political blogosphere". Really? Let's see the spreadsheet and ask questions like,

1) How did the researcher determine the gender and race of each blogger?

2) On what basis did a given blog make the list?

3) How does the list split between "liberal" and "conservative" blogs?

Has anyone other than Goodman seen the spreadsheet?

At the current level of detail, this discussion is pretty pointless. If Goodman got a paper constructed in this manner in her course, I'd hope she'd return it for a re-write (but apparently not).

Posted by Michael Griffin | August 11, 2007 6:31 PM

There seems, to me, to exist a fundamental difference between the method used to select op-ed columnists (chosen, presumably, by the publisher and other high-ranking officials of the newspaper) and the method used to select bloggers (pretty much anyone who wants to be one is free to do so.)

Matt's original post doesn't attempt to equate the two, but I'm not exactly sure what he's trying to show by mentioning the demographics of op-ed columnists in this context--other than (maybe) suggesting that white males are inherently good at punditry.

Posted by James Gary | August 11, 2007 6:42 PM

Armando's summary of the frontpage is slightly incomplete. There are three more white men. Adam Bonin will occasionally post on the front page, usually about legal matters. Bill in Portland Maine has front-page status for his Cheers and Jeers. And occasionally CT will post something of a technical nature, since he is responsible for keeping the site running.

What Goodman and others have not explored are other aspects of demographic diversity. For example, how many of the frontpagers are gay or bisexual? What if any diversity is represented by religious orientation? What is the age spread? In the case of dailykos I believe the youngest is probably Georgia10 who should still be in her 20s. The only one over 60 is Meteor Blades, who like me was born in 1946. Nor has there been any exploration of educational background. Diversity goes far beyond merely the questions of gender and of race. And certainly I have seen no analysis of socioeconomic status, although I would presume the vast majority qualify as at least the midpoint of the middle class.

The dailykos community as a whole has quite a wide range on all measures of diversity. I have had some of my high school students post there, Mr. Liberal was only 14 when he first posted, and I know of people over 80.

Peace.

Posted by teacherken | August 11, 2007 7:32 PM

The first thing to remember is that the big newspapers and network news departments all have high-powered affirmative action programs in hiring and promotion of minorities and women. William McGowan's book "Coloring the News" has all the juicy details.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 11, 2007 8:22 PM

Four of the five Atlantic bloggers are Harvard men: Fallows is from the earlier generation of Harvard centrist opinion-mongers that included Michael Kinsley, Nicholas Lemann, and Mickey Kaus, while Matt Yglesias, Ross Douthat, and Marc Ambinder are all recent graduates of Harvard.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 11, 2007 8:27 PM

It's just too hard to figure out who's a top blogger, and which if them are women. Did she include Digby, who's real name is Heather?

Also, have all these bloggers and columnists written books? Yglesias aside, most of the biggest agents and book editors are female.

Posted by Mr. Know It All | August 11, 2007 9:50 PM

The first thing to remember is that the big newspapers and network news departments all have high-powered affirmative action programs in hiring and promotion of minorities and women.

Well, maybe not the first thing. Start with "The Powers That Be."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 11, 2007 10:06 PM

"Seven of the Eight Elect are white, but one African-American columnist out of eight actually means that blacks are slightly overrepresented relative to their share of the population."

Kind of a shortage of white, gentile males though, is there even one with a "regular column on the op-ed page" at the NY Times right now? Yes, I know that topic is taboo in the US, but still...

Posted by Swedish tiger | August 12, 2007 9:19 AM

"Four of the five Atlantic bloggers are Harvard men: Fallows is from the earlier generation of Harvard centrist opinion-mongers that included Michael Kinsley, Nicholas Lemann, and Mickey Kaus, while Matt Yglesias, Ross Douthat, and Marc Ambinder are all recent graduates of Harvard."

Yeah, that's true... but eh, what do you expect?

Posted by Korha | August 12, 2007 2:51 PM