Men dominate sports and government reporting; health and education reporters more likely to be women, Pew finds

Men and sports! Women and families! U.S. journalists’ beats vary based on their gender and race — and still largely break down along stereotypical lines, according to some research that Pew Research released Tuesday. The new data points were pulled from a report on nearly 12,000 U.S. journalists that Pew published in 2022. Here are a few interesting data points:

— Male journalists were still much more likely to cover sports. Women were more likely to cover health, and family and education.

— Travel and entertainment are “the only topic area in which a majority of those who cover it (57%) are freelance or self-employed journalists.” Perhaps not coincidentally, travel is also where BuzzFeed is experimenting with AI-generated content.

— Pew found that journalists’ beats vary “modestly” by race and ethnicity. White journalists — who accounted for about three-quarters of the journalists Pew surveyed in total — represented large majorities of every beat except for “social issues and policy.”

More here.