News Production and Consumption

Hello everyone.  Ever wonder how op-eds fit into the broader news-media world?  I do.  So, to prepare for the Byline Survey final results, I felt the need to get a better sense of the broader news media environment and the ways in which op-eds are situated within it.  Today we’ll take a look at statistics on the production and consumption of news in legacy and new media.

MEDIA PRODUCTION

On the production end of the news I tried to answer these questions:

- Who is writing?

- What are they writing about?

- Who is playing what role (experts, spokespersons, or sources)?

LEGACY MEDIA 

Each year the American Society of Newspaper Editors conducts a survey of newspaper staff demographics.  In 2011, 847 of 1,405 daily newspapers (58% of the national total) responded to this survey. The report revealed significant disparities in race and gender.  According to this report, “441 newspapers responding to the ASNE census had no minorities on their full-time staff”.

Below is the demographic composition of the 41,600 full-time staff journalists working at the surveyed newspapers.

Women: 15,400 (approximately) = 37%   (minorities: 19.3% of women)

Caucasian women:  30% of all staff journalists

Minority women: 7% of all staff journalists

Men: 26,300 (approximately) = 63%   (minorities: 10.8% of men)

Caucasian Men: 56%

Minority men: 7%

* Keep in mind that according to the US Census 36% of the population are minorites.

In 2010, the Global Media Monitoring Project conducted a survey on the contributions of women to news media in 108 countries.   Among other things, they examined the topics that women contribute to in newspapers, television, and radio and the ways in which they contribute to them.  Although GMMP has charted significant gains since its first study in 1995, they have held to their original observation:

“In no medium, region, or news topic did the female-male ratio approach parity.  Women’s visibility in the news was extremely and uniformly low.”

Interestingly enough, the 2010 GMMP findings on the distributions in topic matter contributions mirrored that of the OpEd Project research.  The chart below illustrates this tendency for women to contribute least to politics and economics, more to health, art, and education, and most to Pink Topics.

The chart below shows that as age increased both sexes were more likely to be utilized as experts.  Beginning at the age of 19 men were at least 11% more likely to act as experts and the gender gap increased with age.  The gap culminates in the age group of 65 or older, when men appear as experts 68% points more often than women do.  In this age group a woman is almost as likely to be used in the role of expert than a young man in the 13 to 18 age group.

NEW MEDIA

In the digital realm there are fewer statistics on new media production due to its decentralized and sprawling nature.

Enter The Gender Report!  The Gender Report has tracked gender representation in online news outlets* for the last 10 months by looking at one lead article in each of eight websites once a week.  They found that in the first 9 months of their survey women made up 38% of authors and 25% of sources.

I’ve also taken a look at blogging activity to get a sense of the gender balance of new media output.  A 2010 Technorati survey found that bloggers are predominantly male and more affluent and educated than the general population:

• 2/3 of bloggers are male.
• 79% have college degrees / 43% have graduate degrees
• 1/3 have a household income of $75K+
• 1/4 have a household income of $100K+

Researchers at Northwestern University found that in general, men are far more likely than women to share their work (be it writing, photos, videos) online, but when they controlled for “self-reported digital literacy” the gender gap disappeared.   The researchers concluded that the disparity was a result of “self perceived skill levels”.

MEDIA CONSUMPTION

On the consumption end of the news I tried to find the demographics of traditional and new media readership.  I would expect the contributors to an outlet to be reflections of the audience.

LEGACY MEDIA

A 2003 study that examined newspaper readership correlations with age, residence, education, gender, and income concluded that, “The fraction of variation in readership accounted for by demographics is small, indicating that newspapers have a broad reach across demographic groups.”   In most of the newspaper markets that they studied, length of residence and age were found to be the strongest predictors.  These two variables were followed by income, which had a small, though positive association with readership.  There was almost no variation accounted for by education and gender.

NEW MEDIA

According to the Women’s Media Center, in 2009 men made up 48.2% of the overall Internet population.  Projections show that by 2013, men will only make up 47.9% of Internet users.

As for the new media outlets that we have been tracking, 52% of The Huffington Post audience is female.  Caucasians are disproportionately represented, making up 79% of all readers.  It has recently added blog categories especially for blacks, Latinos, and LGBT voices, so I suspect those numbers will rise in the near future.  65% of their audience is college educated.  Salon’s audience is 56% male, overwhelmingly Caucasian (84%), and highly educated (72% are college educated).

In these two examples we do find a relationship.  According to our research, men have written about 64% of the articles at the Huffington Post and 78% at Salon.  When the final analysis of the Byline Survey is completed, we will be able to see whether or not women contribute more to the Huffington Post in all subjects, or whether they simply write more Pink Topics.

Huffington Post

Salon

Lost and Found

My name is Chelsea Carmona and I have been working as the Regional Management Intern for The OpEd Project in San Diego under Barbara Field. Having registered months in advance, I drove down to UCSD for the “Write to Change the World” seminar with the highest of expectations.

Initially, we introduced ourselves. Sitting in the corner, I shrunk into my chair- clearly intimidated by the success and confidence of the women surrounding me. Everything I had once considered a personal accomplishment suddenly escaped me. As my turn approached, the other women, including Zeba Kahn (our Seminar Leader), urged me. Even if perpetual unemployment had become an acceptable area of expertise for some, it was not for me. As a junior as UCSD, I had conducted a comparative study on incarceration rates and prison demographics in the United States and the Netherlands. Iwas currently working with the City of Irvine’s Prevention Coalition to develop and implement a media literacy curriculum in K-12. Yes I was unemployed, but I could

be a substantial resource for many people in the room.

Following the seminar, we packed up and headed to PF Chang’s for a dinner/cocktail hour. As “America’s Next Great Pundit” runner-up Zeba Kahn approached me, I tried to envision her in my position. However difficult, she was not nearly as intimidating as I had originally envisioned, and I really appreciated all of her personalized training efforts. She explained how her career progressed following her participation in the 2009 seminar, which, coincidentally, was exactly what I needed to hear to better comprehend my position in the seminar, my life, and my dream.

The seminar was my Christmas gift from my parents, and they were thrilled to hear that I truly embraced the experience. I believe I have left the seminar with a few vital pieces of personal information in addition to the professional benefits of an Op-Ed. Perhaps most importantly, I discovered that I may not be the only ambitious woman who falls off course for a little bit.

Women from all over the country convene in San Diego in the name of Op-Education

Chelsea Carmona, Regional Management Intern, weighing in on last weekend’s “Change the World” Seminar: An amazing group of women attended the San Diego training on Saturday, January 28th at The Women’s Center, UC San Diego. Women who live as far away as Hawaii, Canada, and North Carolina even made their way to the event. Each woman was a powerhouse of ideas and energy. We look forward to reading their op-eds very soon! Big thanks to Zeba Kahn for traveling from the east coast and inspiring all of the women in the room!

Barbara Field, Op Ed Regional Manager

Chelsea Carmona, Regional Management Intern

Want your opinion piece to pack a punch? Consider emotional engagement.

Last week, Tey Meadow of the Princeton Public Voices Fellowship Program published a stellar op-ed in the Huffington Post whose first line read: “Most of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth we saw on the news in 2011 were dead.” If that doesn’t pack a punch to knock you off your chair, I don’t know what does.

Tey’s piece, “Queer Children Are Dying… But Many More Are Living” calls attention both to the tragic one-dimensionality of the stories being told about LGBTQ youth in the media today, and to the scarcity of stories on the systematic discrimination of these young people. Tey cites the danger of painting a consistently dark LGBTQ reality, saying that such coverage “has begun to make it seem as if these deaths are unavoidable, even normative responses to homophobia in our culture.” She stresses how important messages of hope and solidarity are to youth who are struggling to assert their identities in a family, peer group, or culture that denigrates these assertions.

Tey’s piece demonstrates a nimble negotiation of fact and feeling. When trying to convince someone that we’re right, we’re often tempted to focus on the expert appeal of our opinions and forgo emotional engagement. But in some cases, being the most logical, credentialed, intellectually convincing voice on the page will only get you so far. Tey does a fantastic job of pairing statistics and expert opinions with poignant examples of real teenagers who are triumphing in their struggle to be stronger than the influences that seek to break them down. The result is an engaging, thoughtful, and moving piece that introduces much-needed complexity to a difficult conversation.

Congratulations Tey!

-Ravenna Koenig, Junior Fellow

Power of an OpEd

ALUM PERSPECTIVE:

Talk about results.  Qanta Ahmed has published nearly two dozen op-eds and columns since coming through The OpEd Project last March – in places like The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The Huffington Post and USA Today. Subsequently she was cited in both The Washington Post and Forbes.com. Qanta (who will be our Alum Ambassador at our upcoming New York City seminar on February 11) recently wrote us about the power of words:

“Congressman(R) Peter King came to my hospital today to inaugurate our health program for World Trade Center first responders. I had written in support of his hearings on Radical Islam a year ago this month in the Wall Street Journal.

Today, hoping to meet him I printed out my op-ed,’ just in case.’ Putting it in the pocket of my doctor’s coat, I went to hear him and other leaders speak. When the press conference was over I went to introduce myself. I showed him the piece, which he in fact remembered without prompting – he had read it at the time. 

This led to an invitation for me to meet him in his office and discuss how I can serve his mission further.  We begin our dialogue later this month.

A single op-ed has therefore carried me to the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in under a year. My writing is carrying me to the epicenter of policy makers in the area in which I want to exert more influence. With [OpEd Project Mentor-Editor] Annie Murphy Paul’s mentorship that influence is just beginning to spread its wings. Just amazing.

That’s the power of the written word. Thank you for helping me amplify, refine and empower my voice. You do tremendous work, and in our short history of collaboration you have been pivotal to my development and my ability to realize my true mission.

–Qanta A. A. Ahmed MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM

Note:  Come meet Qanta on February 11 – at our next open seminar followed by our New York City happy hour (which is open to everyone).

New Seminar, New Ideas

Most times, when one goes through the same event more than once, it is a repetitive experience.  Fortunately for me, such was definitely not the case at this past weekend’s OpEd Project seminar in Chicago.

Like the last seminar in October, the Jan 15th. event was attended by a range of talented and successful women from a variety of sectors.  With 26 participants, including one man, the seminar was completely booked and the seats filled.  Michele Weldon and Deborah Siegel were the leaders, but they engaged with the participants like friends.

The day was stimulating in a variety of ways, not least of which was the dynamic variety of people in the room.  A documentarian who had traveled the world, a financial manager of multi-million dollar accounts, entrepreneurs – these people and more filled the room with great ideas and energy.  During a heated discussion that pushed others to think deeply, I believe there was even a joking middle finger directed at one of the leaders.  It was quite a rousing session, to say the least.

New themes that I personally picked up from this session were debates between personal and professional expertise – a point raised by several participants.  When is one’s personal experienced considered sufficient enough to qualify one as an expert?  Which is more important in offering a well-informed opinion?  We discussed this and more themes crucial to both op-ed publication and knowing one’s own strengths, two seemingly distinct topics that are actually closely linked.

Happy Hour at the Elephant and Castle afterward was a great moment for – of course – happy drinking, along with networking.  I am always struck by the accomplishments of the women in the OpEd Project, and what better way to really get to know others  than over a couple beers? After hearing about everyone’s experiences throughout the seminar, this was the perfect time to connect with those on the same paths as ourselves.  For instance, I heard two women make a connection over Afghanistan, as one of them was moving there for a job and the other had a friend who lived there who could offer her advice.  I heard a publisher enticing people in traditionally non-writing careers to write for her.  I myself met a wonderful person who offered me her knowledge and experience in starting a business.

Needles to say, I’m already looking forward to our next session on April 28th.  Cheers to that.

Working with Faculty Scholars and Graduate Students at Emory University, Center for Women

 

Emory University professor Dorothy Brown and grad student Mashandi Matabane debate wealth and tax

Resolved: to Raise a Voice in the New Year

New Years Resolutions: a tired practice, I know. Though it may be a threadbare annual ritual that fails so many of us after the first few weeks of making it, perhaps 2012′s resolutions will be more likely kept if we make them in service of public discourse. When you’re trying to keep a promise, not just to your own waistline by getting into an exercise routine, or to your own lungs by quitting smoking, but to the wider world by contributing your very expert insights, perhaps you’ll be better at keeping it. Perhaps, too, the power of our resolutions will be strengthened by the inspiration of the many successes that our Public Voices Fellowship scholars celebrated along with the holidays in December.

In December, Greg Acevedo of the Graduate School of Social Services at Fordham published a fantastic piece in the Huffington Post, “Somehow…Someday!…” , about Puerto Rico and how self determination on the island is still being hindered by the United States. After a century-long relationship in which the U.S. has verged on imperialist and Puerto Rico has become, in Acevedo’s words, a “colony lite,” many people still don’t understand how much of a role the U.S. plays in Puerto Rico’s “smoke-and-mirrors ‘democracy.’” Give it a read.

Also in December, Leslie Gerwin of Princeton University published her first op-ed of the program on CNN.Opinion. Her piece “Why we’re not prepared for a flu pandemic”  discusses the role that politics plays in vaccination. Her choice to focus on the convergence of politics and public health is essential to understanding the 2009-10 flu pandemic, as well as preparing for the crises yet to come.

On January 5th PBS Need to Know ran a great piece by Noliwe Rooks, also of the Princeton program, entitled “Reframing the debate over charter schools.”  In her op-ed she discusses the media and policy attention that was paid to charter schools in 2011, specifically how, in most of the coverage, the complexities behind the success and failure of the institutions weren’t portrayed. Her recommendation to focus on representing and replicating the education models that have been empirically successful is one that opens the conversation on education in 2012 with intelligence and wisdom. Congrats Noliwe!

To those scholars who published in 2011, we are grateful for your knowledge and commend you for your fearlessness in going on the record for the benefit of us all. To those who have various gems in the works: don’t let them idle on your laptop screens forever! The 2012 world needs your voices as much as ever. So, let’s all resolve to write, and let’s keep this resolution.

How a College Student Wrote a Lead Op-Ed in the Chicago Tribune

I’ve been an intern at the OpEd Project since Chicago’s Oct. 1st seminar.  As a journalism student at Northwestern University, it was very inspiring for me to be around women with so many more professional and personal accomplishments than I.  Though I’d always been confident in my writing abilities, I feared that my lack of life experience in comparison with the rest of opinion writers put me at a disadvantage.

So when I sent in my piece on North Korea and family to The Chicago Tribune, I did not even think that it would run as one of the lead op-eds on Christmas.  The whole process proved to me that truly anyone can write an op-ed, because everyone has something to share with the world.

It began with the news of Kim Jong-Il’s death on Dec. 17th.  My interest was immediately peaked.  Everyone seems to know about North Korea’s violation of human rights and political pariah status.  But little know of the families who were torn apart when Korea was  permanently split into two, something that my own family was subjected to.  I knew that I had to write about it.  My family comes from South Korea, so the news of the dictator’s death naturally had more meaning for us than most Americans.

This proved to be the crucial news hook to my story.  When writing for a media outlet, even if it’s an opinion piece, it is ideal to relate to a current event, as the public’s interest in the topic and the story’s impact will be high.

My next step was to make sure that my story was, in fact, of interest to other people.  This was another way that the OpEd Project helped me out, since it was through the organization that I was introduced to her.  I looked her up on the Tribune’s contacts page (many editors at other outlets are easily reachable as well) and left a short pitch on her voicemail.  She called me back the next morning and said my story interesting, and that I should send her my draft as soon as possible.

I had to write 800-something words in that same day and send it to her the next.  Writing the op-ed, however, was easy.  Much easier than I thought it would be.  The wonderful thing about writing op-eds is that freedom of expression and voice are encouraged.  It is almost like writing a diary entry, except the facts much be perfectly straightforward and correct.

After I sent it in, Marcia called me the same day to tell me it would be running online and in print on Christmas.  I was elated.  Not only was my work worth publishing in the Tribune, but more importantly the story of the personal tragedies caused by North Korea would be shared with many.  People would know.  People would be aware.  People would, perhaps, begin to care about North Korea for more than political reasons.

We all have a part of ourselves, be it a career, relationship, or something else, that is worth sharing.  A well-rounded, healthy society is one in which a rich conversation is fueled by a range of voices.  As I outlined and as the OpEd Project teaches, the steps to getting our individual voice out there are fairly simple.  It just takes effort and some creative thinking.

Take it from me, a 21-year-old girl still struggling to get her homework done on time.  If I can do it, so can you.

————

Link to the article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-1225-korea-20111225,0,6269574.story

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OEP Shoutout in UT San Diego

Barbara Field was recently interviewed and featured in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Check out what she had to say about OEP and her current projects:

Barbara Field, writer and mentor

Barbara Field’s stint as a volunteer mentor for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project ended after one month, but her passion for writing and her desire to help other women get their voices heard received the jump-start of a lifetime.

After working with women who risked so much to share their poems, stories and essays on the group’s website

(awwproject.org), Field rediscovered her own love of creative writing. She also became involved with the OpEd Project, a group dedicated to getting more female voices into the global media conversation.

“Honestly, it’s about the power of words,” said Field, who manages communication and metrics for UC San Diego’s department of business and financial services. “Words give you the power to change everything.”

Click here to read the rest of the article.