These overall figures do not show the whole story, as there were some large variations between different sections of each newspaper. Figure 4.2 illustrates that the majority of articles were national/local news, followed by sports, business and feature, with the smallest number in editorial and front page.
National/Local news was the largest category, and is an area of newspaper management influence, as this topic is covered by the newspaper‘s own staff in the way of reporters, stringers, and gallery staff. The 2,623 articles in this section included the hard news subjects of crime, local authority, national politics, transport, etc., as these are seen as directly affecting the newspapers' target audience. The graph (Figure 4.2) shows the gender division of bylines for national/local news was just about even, with female 49.6% and male 50.4%.
Front page articles were similarly fairly gender balanced: female bylines (48.7 %) and male bylines (51.3%). This is a significant category as the front page is where the management places the best and most important articles, traditionally considered the ―hardest‖ news of the day. Each front page had only about three articles each day; hence the overall number of articles in this section is small, only 271. As shown in Table 4.1, the largest-circulation newspaper in the country, The New Zealand Herald, stood out in its high ratio of front page stories written by women journalists, at 64%, followed by the capital city‘s Dominion-Post with 55%.
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Figure 4.2 Gender Bylines by Newspaper Topic Section
Feature section articles were authored more by men than women, but again, like front page and national/local news, it was nearly a balanced ratio. Female bylines were on 494 feature articles (46%) and male bylines on 577 articles (54%). The Dominion-Post had the highest percentage of features written by women (50%) which was an exactly even division on gender authorship. The Otago Daily Times had the lowest percentage of articles written by women (40%) with the rest of the newspapers in between these two results. Feature articles included consumer interest and in-depth political and health articles, as well as the more commercial columns that included reviews of travel, books, food, real estate, gardening, etc., the type of articles considered ―soft news‖.
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Female bylines Male bylines 37% female 48.7% female 46% female 49.6% female 25% female 8.5% female
112 Business section articles totaled 1,173 and showed a wider gap between female bylines (37%) and male bylines (63%) than the previously discussed sections above. Business articles usually were printed in a separate fold-out section of the newspaper, and some newspapers gave the topic more emphasis than others did. The Dominion-Post stood out as publishing more business articles than the other newspapers. Its female business reporters turned out highly-placed articles on a regular basis, frequently dominating the front of the business section. In addition, many of the stories were reprinted in other Fairfax-owned newspapers. However, the tally of all articles for the month revealed that female journalists overall still accounted for only 38% of the bylines in the Dominion-Post business section. It was a similar percentage at New Zealand Herald (30%). The Otago Daily Times ran fewer business articles, and only had 13 female bylines in this section in the entire month (10%). The Press, on the other hand, printed more business articles with female bylines (51%) than males, and the Waikato Times printed an almost equal number of business articles with female bylines (47%).
Opinion articles were very male-dominated, with only 25% written by women. This gender imbalance is made further visible to readers by the page layout, as most articles included the picture of the writer as well as his or her name. Opinion sections included unsigned editorials written by the newspaper and letters-to-the editor, both of which are not considered ―articles‖ for this analysis. The majority of articles in this section, however, were opinion columns written regularly by senior journalists and community leaders. Opinion articles are usually commissioned by the newspaper editor, and run every week or fortnight over a long term. There were often only six each day; hence the low overall numbers (360). The Waikato Times stood out with almost half of its opinion columns written by women (47%). At the
113 other end of the spectrum was the Otago Daily Times, which printed a very small percentage of opinion columns by women (7%), and the majority of these were written by a university student representative.
Table 4.1 Percentage of Female Bylines by Newspaper and Topic Section % female bylines NZ Average Dominion Post NZ
Herald ODT Press
Waikato Times Business 37 38 30 10 51 47 Opinion 25 28 27 7 20 47 Features 46 50 47 40 44 49 Front Page 48.7 55 64 36 39 44 National & Local News 49.6 56 51 47 44 55 Sports 8.5 11 9 5 11 9
Sports articles showed the widest gap between male and female bylines. Overall female bylines accounted for only 8.5% and males 91.5%. Sports news was a significant part of all five of the sample newspapers, with 2,769 articles, 1,100 of them had a byline. In some newspaper‘s sport sections only a small handful of articles contained bylines by women. None of the newspapers showed any leadership in balancing the gender make-up of their sports section. The lowest was 5% in Otago Daily Times and the highest was 11% at two Fairfax newspapers, The Press and the Dominion-Post.
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