In 2010, women were 'significantly underrepresented and misrepresented' in the media. Where are we now?

In our Throwback Thursday series, we take a look at what the key figures in media were thinking in the past, based on the Journalism.co.uk archive, and how those issues can be related to the current challenges and opportunities that dominate the conversation about the digital media landscape.

Read the rest of the series here, including a special on quotes from the first two newsrewired digital journalism events organised by Journalism.co.uk in 2010.

This week, we take a look at three stories on topics that still feel extremely current today: diversity in the media, lay-offs and the rise of (the not so new) data journalism.

Women 'significantly underrepresented' in the media

Some 46 percent of stories reinforced gender stereotypes and only 13 per cent of news stories focused centrally on women, a study published by the Global Media Monitoring Project in 2010 showed.

It looked at both the gender balance of newsroom teams and the gender of the subjects of news and feature stories, and found women to be "significantly underrepresented and misrepresented".

The Global Media Monitoring Project publishes its global survey every five years. The 2015 release found that women’s presence in the news as sources increased to 38 per cent from 31 per cent in 2005. But the percentage of women featured as experts or news commentators had only increased by two per cent – to 19 per cent in 2015 from 17 per cent in 2005. Read the full report here.

In Britain, diversity in newsrooms remains an issue. A study published in 2016 showed the British media was 94 per cent white and 55 per cent male.

Neil Thurman, associate professor, City University London, presented the results at the Guardian Changing Media Summit in March 2016.

"While diversity in British journalism has improved in some respects, there is still some way to go and there are some worrying trends for the future."

Thurman's survey also found that women were underpaid, with 50 per cent of female journalists earning £2,400 or under a month, compared with only a third of men.

Sacked journalists still passionate about the industry

Joint research from Journalism.co.uk and the University of Central Lancashire in 2010 showed that journalists who had been laid off still retained their passion for the profession.

The majority of survey respondents came from the regional and local press and had been made redundant in 2009.

Most said they felt a strong link with journalism, saying it was more than a job, and that it defined them.

One respondent said: "I have been left feeling hurt by the whole experience, not because I lost my job, but knowing that people with a passion for making a difference are not being treated seriously because management just want to replace these people with press releases."

Podcast: Data journalism - what's driving the trend?

Data journalism isn’t new. We hear it today at many talks and workshops, and we heard it back in 2010 at a panel discussion at the Frontline Club.

"None of this is new," Simon Rogers, then news editor for data at the Guardian, now data editor at Google, told delegates. "There was a table of schools data on the back page of the first edition of the Guardian."

The panel shared some advice for getting started in data journalism, including:

• If you're using data, link directly to the source or publish it if it's your own;
• Look at where your data is coming from, who's collecting it and why they are doing it;
• Remember that your readers can be experts.

Read more tips and listen to a podcast from the talk here.

See you next week for more Throwback Thursday! Do you remember any predictions that never came to pass, or any quotes that were spot on from 'back in the day'? Tweet us at @journalismnews.

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