HuffPo bylines overwhelmingly belong to male bloggers
Writer Jessica Wakeman recently had an interesting study published by media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting on the present number of bylines belonging to women on Huffington Post.
After two months of tracking the number of bylines on the homepage, she found that only 23% of them belong to women:
The Post does seem to be making a conscious effort to include women's voices; despite the low percentages, the study found at least one female byline on the home page at all times. But if there is indeed such an effort, it stops far short of parity. Of the 89 times bylines were checked during the study, not once did the number of women's bylines equal those belonging to men. Only eight times did women account for more than a third of all bylines. And Arianna Huffington, appearing 57 times, accounted for more than a fifth of all women's bylines; 45 of those occupied the most visible top post. Only once, in fact, did a woman other than Arianna Huffington get her byline in the most visible top slot--Post editor-at-large Nora Ephron (8/26/08).
I'd like to see a larger study around this; too many of us feel that women bloggers are underrepresented and undervalued in the progressive blogosphere, but hard evidence is always helpful.Thoughts?
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This is no shock. I find little inspiring about Huffington. Most of that site consists of white male bloggers complaining about white males.
Not only are female blogger under rated we have to work twice as hard to get anywhere. Time after time feminist blogs are attacked by angry trolls. I cannot tell you how many MRA infestations I have had. They swarm demanding the right to spread their lies and false information.
I am sure I am not only feminist/womanist blogger to be threatened online either.
Renee, you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Liberal female bloggers are consistently blasted as hateful and nasty.
and YES, I've been threatened and harrassed online.
After Obama won, other military wives started leaving hate messages to me for my support.
I'd be interested to know the ratio of male to female writers on HuffPo. If there are more male writers, and they submit more articles, you'd expect this result. I looked at the Fair.org piece and it did not have these details. This seems like important information.
Their best columnist (Rachel Sklar) left the site last week to finish her book.
Sad, but not surprising. One of the things that really bugs me about Politico is that their only female columnist does a gossip feature. In spite of the media revolution called the internet, women diverted into doing fluff work. Grrr.
Should be "women journalists are still diverted"... sorry
If you're a female blogger and you write well (not just 'good enough' but well), the world will beat a path to your door. So will the Huffington Post.