Study: Huffington Post Favors Male Bloggers

Or, to put it another way, female bloggers are out of favor when it comes to appearing on the front pages of the massively-popular Huffington Post.

Arianna Huffington.

In a fascinating study by Extra!, only 255 of 1,125 bylines, or 23 percent, of stories that appeared in the 13 "featured blog" slots on HuffPo's regularly-updated home page at a time belonged to women.

Extra! achieved these figures by recording featured bylines twice every weekday for nine weeks and coded them by gender. The study period lasted about two months, from 7/7/08 to 9/5/08.

More insight: Parity is scarce. 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.

Former HuffPoster Jessica Wakeman reports at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

Women's voices have long been lacking in corporate media. As Internet outlets compete more and more with traditional media as a source for news and opinion, will women's voices be heard there more frequently than in print publications? If the Huffington Post, one of the most prominent and successful blogs today, is an accurate barometer, the answer is no. [...]

While the Huffington Post provides an outlet for certain voices that seldom make it into the corporate media, it falls perfectly in line with elite print media's abysmal gender numbers. In Extra!'s 2005 op-ed study (5–6/05) of major newspapers and magazines, U.S. News & World Report led magazines with a still-dismal 28 percent of op-eds penned by women, followed by Newsweek at 23 percent and Time at 13 percent. Newspapers fared even worse: Women's bylines appeared on 20 percent of op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, 17 percent in the New York Times and 10 percent in the Washington Post. For syndicated columnists, the numbers were likewise low, with women writing 24 percent of columns at the eight major syndicates (Editor & Publisher, 3/15/05)—which still beats the Huffington Post.

Which left me with some simple questions: I acknowledge the scarcity of women overall, but just how many of the Huffington Post's revolving stable of active bloggers are women? I'd be interested to know if there's parity when it comes to the flow of content coming in -- is the lack of women on the front page the result of editorial bias, or are there simply less women writing for HuffPo than men? (I don't have those answers, but I'd like to know more.) And if so, why?

Of course, if Huffington herself is wooing more female bloggers than male, than perhaps these numbers are indicative of something greater. But, as complicated as the Huffington Post site is, so is the ability to root this theory in data: is there gender parity within the politics section, clearly the favored section of HuffPo? Or does the imbalance of, say, "green" stories (and the writers who write them) perpetuate this problem on the site's penultimate front page?

(HuffPosters, if you're out there, I'd love to know.)

Positioning The Politico: Why We Shouldn't Expect a Teenager to Drive Like Michael Schumacher and Other Thoughts on Bias

Boston Phoenix editor-in-chief John Harris says The Politico is conservative.

I can agree with him on one point: It's certainly not liberal.

But it's not truly conservative, either.

Today's biggest flap in the journalism world is the accusation that The Politico, that mostly online but still 25,000 strong in print news outlet for Capitol Hill, is cozy with conservatives.

But I think he's wrong -- or at least a little presumptuous.

Take a look at The Politico's front page today. What do you see? I see articles about Democrats; I see articles about Republicans. I notice that today, there are more GOP-focused articles than the former. Does that make The Politico biased?

In a time when Republicans are in power in the executive arm of our federal government, I'm not at all surprised that there are more articles covering the GOP than the Democrats.

But Editorialiste, what about all the coverage that other news outlets are giving the Democrats? you say. And I say that is exactly why The Politico covers what it does: Because it's carving out its own niche in a crowded market.

Just over 100 days ago, who would have thought that The Politico would come to be a revered (if only in a slightly notorious way) name in Washington politics? Remember, the publication is still young. And to ensure that people (read: politicians and fellow journalists) keep coming back for more, The Politico staffers need to figure out a unique way of approaching things.

In this case, it's avoiding the focus on the Democratic rat-race and focusing on the areas that some outlets are skipping over. Combined with it's proximity to The Hill, I'm just not surprised that it's "hustling to sell itself," as Harris wrote.

Compared with other complaints leveled at Politico since it launched, these criticisms were actually pretty mild. In its three-plus months, Politico has been the focus of some 40 MMA items. Among other things, it’s been chided by the group for calling John McCain “authentic” and “staunchly anti-abortion”; citing Barack Obama’s “frank liberalism” and claiming Obama has a “Jewish problem”; coining the phrase “slow bleed” (which became a GOP favorite) to describe Democratic plans for Iraq; and incorrectly reporting that Democrat John Edwards was about to drop out of the presidential race.

These are all valid points to make. But The Politico is still working out its kinks. Quite frankly, if these are the worst errors that have happened in The Politico's rapid ascent to ultra-high visibility, then fine. They're mostly old journalists, but this is a new venture that in many ways is different from what's already out there.

Furthermore, I just don't see The Politico turning into a FOX-like outlet that patently denies anything that isn't on their agenda. Could The Politico turn out to lean slightly conservative? Maybe -- but we'll only be able to tell when a Democrat is in office.

Maybe The Politico isn't cozy with conservatives so much as cozy with Washington in general. They are admittedly passionate about what they do, right?

But there's one thing about The Politico that is important at this juncture: It's tradition-breaking practices. Not only is The Politico a new model for business (print/online combo), but it's a fascinating case-study in how to run a publication, editorially. Harris, I gather, would agree:

This mindset is evident both in the prose of Politico’s writers and in the way the publication has responded to its critics. After Salon’s Greenwald e-mailed Politico reporter Mike Allen with questions about the paper’s relationship with Drudge, for example, Harris replied with a 1200-word e-mail and gave Greenwald permission to post it online. As controversy over the use and origins of “slow bleed” mounted, meanwhile, Harris wrote a column in which he regretfully copped to being the guy responsible. Politico also published a 900-word critique by MMA’s Simon Maloy, titled “Is Politico a GOP Shill?” (It also ran a 2400-word response from Harris, VandeHei, and reporter Ben Smith, which may have been a bit much.)

Over time, this responsiveness and transparency should help Politico establish itself as a distinctive journalistic brand. (It’s hard to imagine, say, the New York Times running an op-ed from a critic accusing it of liberal bias.) It may even convince the publication’s critics that their early concerns were overblown.

John, you're right. So maybe we should just lay off The Politico and let it go through its growing pains before we start criticizing it at the level we do the Washington Post.

Then again, it's handling exactly this level of criticism that has helped propel The Politico to where it is.