My Research

After reading the literature on symbolic annihilation, I was curious if my local newspaper The Washington Post was covering women differently from the papers I’d read about in studies. I decided to analyze the sources used in the Metro (local) section for the week from Wednesday, April 16, 2008 to Tuesday, April 22, 2008. I chose the Metro section because it covers a wide variety of topics relevant to both men and women. The section also did not run any wire copy, so Post reporters and editors had control over the stories from start to finish. Further, the Metro section is an interesting section to focus on because both the managing editor of local news, Ju-Don Roberts, and the online metro editor, Ann Marchand, are women.

While one week of coverage is only a snapshot of the performance of the Post and my results can not be generalized to any articles other than those I reviewed, it does offer an opportunity to assess whether in this week of coverage women were given the attention and emphasis they deserve in one of the nation’s top newspapers.

Method

To conduct this study I first counted all of the stories and briefs. In the week I analyzed, The Washington Post Metro section featured 95 stories and 84 briefs excluding obituaries and paid death notices.

I coded all of the stories and briefs for the gender of individual who was the focus of the story (if the story was about one person).

For my other analysis I excluded the briefs because they contained few quotes. Focusing on the stories, I recorded the gender of the story’s author. Four stories were co-authored by a man and a women and were counted as half for each gender. A total of 49 stories were written by men and 46 stories were written by women. On four of the seven days more stories written by women.

I carefully read each of the stories and recorded the gender of the first source used, how many sources of each gender were used and whether the sources were official or unofficial. I only counted a person as a source if they were quoted in a direct quotation. When I compared the gender of the journalist to the gender of the sources used, I excluded the four co-authored stories.

Based on past research I formed the following hypotheses:

1. The Washington Post Metro section will quote more men than women.

2. The Washington Post Metro section will have more men as the central focus of a story or brief than women.

3. The Washington Post Metro section will depict more women as victims than men.

4. The Washington Post Metro section will use more men as the first source in a story.

5. The Washington Post Metro section will depict more women as unoffical sources than official sources.

6. Both male and female Post journalists will quote more men than women, but female reporters will quote more women than male reporters.

7. Female reporters for the Metro section will use more women as the first source in their stories than their male counterparts.

Summary of Findings

Hypothesis 1 was confirmed. The Washington Post quoted more men than women. Of the 95 stories analyzed, three stories had no direct quotes at all. The other 92 stories used a total of 382 sources and 130 or 31 percent of the sources were women (four of the sources were not identifiable by gender because they requested anonymity or their gender was not easily identifiable by their name).

Hypothesis 2 was confirmed. The Washington Post was more likely to have a story or brief with a man as the subject than a woman. Of the 95 stories, 31 focused on a specific individual, but only 7 of those focused on a woman (22.6 percent). The same pattern was found with briefs. Forty-five briefs focused on an individual, but only 11 focused on a woman (24.4 percent).

Hypothesis 3 was not confirmed. In The Washington Post, the victims were more often male than female. Only 2 stories and 7 briefs focused on female victims, while 6 stories and 18 briefs featured male victims.

Hypothesis 4 was confirmed. Sixty-one stories featured a man as the first source while only 31 featured a woman as the first source. However, if you break the first source analysis down by day there was one day, Monday, April 21 when the Metro section featured 7 stories with women as the first source and only 4 stories with men in the most prominent source position.

Hypothesis 5 was not confirmed. In The Washington Post, women were slightly more likely to be quoted as officials (72 official women compared with 59 unofficial women).

Hypothesis 6 was confirmed. Women journalists at The Washington Post were more likely to quote women than their male colleagues. The stories by men quoted a total of 184 sources, 59 of whom were women (32 percent of sources). The stories by women quoted 177 sources, 68 of whom were women (38.4 percent of sources).

Hypothesis 7 was confirmed. Female reporters wrote 18 stories with the first source as a woman or 39 percent of their stories. Male reporters only wrote 13 stories with a woman as the first source or 26.5 percent.

Conclusion

This analysis found many results which further confirm patterns suggested in previous research. Women continue to be under-used as sources in the news media. It also offered further evidence that while female journalists appear to impact whether or not women are quoted, female editors do not have significant impact on the presence of women in the news. However, this analysis also found two patterns were broken by The Washington Post. The Metro section did not over-depict women as victims and it was more likely to quote women as official sources.

One reason for the greater number of female official sources is that in Washington, DC both the police chief and assistant police chief are women and they were quoted in multiple crime stories. The female Chancellor of schools and her spokeswoman also featured in several articles about education. Overall, The Post deserves credit for quoting women in a variety of official roles including as local government officials, lawyers, a school principal, directors of organizations and a judge. There was also one man who was regularly quoted in his role as PTA President of a high school. This was particularly powerful source to reverse stereotypes about PTAs and the perceived gender of individuals who typically participate in that type of education advocacy.