“Old WASPs” and “middle-class white ladies”: what columnists’ self-identification says about diversity in Canadian newsrooms

In the last two decades, as Canada’s demographics have shifted, Canadian news publications have struggled to reflect increasing diversity in both their newsroom makeup and their content. In Canada, news organizations have historically resisted instituting a process to examine their staff composition. In the absence of consistent self-reporting data, this study aims to fill in important information about Canadian newspaper newsroom composition by focusing on data that is actually self-reported by opinion journalists from within their publications. Using phrases from columnists’ published work, this study examines how far the demographic makeup of columnists at Canada’s three largest national newspapers by circulation reflects the diversity of the Canadian population at large. Our findings indicate that while representation of women columnists at the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and the National Post improved over the 21-year period of our study, white columnists – regardless of gender – became significantly more overrepresented, in sharp contrast to census data over the same period. The absence of Indigenous columnists and Black women columnists is especially significant at a time when the discourse around Indigenous issues and anti-Blackness has increased. This paper concludes that while Canada’s population grew increasingly diverse over this period, the gulf between the country’s demographics and those who write on key Canadian issues widened. As a result, a large part of the Canadian public remains underrepresented by major news publications. This paper draws connections between the lack of self-reporting and its potential to impact voice and agency in the newsroom.