When we launched City Cast in 2021, we committed to tracking–and publishing–demographic information about our podcast guests. Diversity is a core City Cast value, and accountability is another. We want to have podcast guests who are diverse in race and ethnicity, gender, economic background, and geography. Tracking and publicizing guest demographics is a way to hold us accountable for representing the diversity of Chicago.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
This is the second year of data we have about City Cast Chicago’s guests. (Here’s our report for last year.) We ask each of our podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 95% of guests responded in 2023. The following data encompass a total of 145 responding guests who collectively made 213 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Chicago staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader city population. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving.
Race/ethnicity of City Cast Chicago podcast guests vs. the Chicago city/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Chicago’s guests broadly mirrored the population of the city and region. We had a higher percentage of Black guests than the city and metro area, and about the same percentage of white and Asian-American guests as the community. But City Cast Chicago had about half the Hispanic guests you’d expect based on Chicago’s population–only 12% compared to 23% for the metro area.
We increased the percentage of Hispanic guests between 2022 and 2023, but not as much as we hoped to. There are understandable reasons for this shortfall: Many Hispanics and Latinx people are immigrants, and immigrant communities are traditionally hard for journalists outside those communities to access. Some may not consume much English-language media. As a result, Hispanic/Latinx residents of Chicago may be less likely to know City Cast Chicago and be part of the community we’re building. But we need to keep pushing to get more excellent Hispanic/Latinx guests on City Cast Chicago.
The gender identity of City Cast Chicago podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 53% majority of our guests identified as female, with 43% identifying as male and 4% identifying as non-binary.
