Diversity in journalism An empirical analysis of gender, age, and origin in German newspaper journalism

By Roxane Biller, Seraina Cadonau and Marion Frank | Diverse and sensitive journalistic reporting is only possible where there is a diversity of staff in editorial offices. Previous studies demonstrate the relevance of the topic. The question guiding the research behind this paper is whether the composition of newspaper editorial offices is sufficiently diverse to reflect the population as a whole. The focus is on three characteristics of diversity: gender, age, and origin. The authors are also interested in the differences between newspapers of different political orientations and between the levels of editorial office and leadership positions. A total of 1,503 data sets from six editorial offices of national newspapers, collected from publicly accessible secondary data and from primary data requested personally, were analyzed.