Our Podcast Guests
How diverse are City Cast Denver’s guests?
When we launched City Cast Denver in spring 2021, we committed to tracking–and publishing–demographic information about our podcast guests. Diversity is a core City Cast value, and we aim to invite guests on our podcasts who are diverse in age, race and ethnicity, gender, economic background, and geography.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our guest pool, really?
City Cast Denver started surveying guests in spring 2021 with an anonymous but rather cumbersome survey. It had an extremely low response rate. So in late 2021 we switched to collecting information directly from guests, and asking them fewer questions–just gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. We’re gathering less information from each podcast guest, but have a higher response rate.
Here are the results, and below them a few notes on where we can improve.
City Cast Denver has data on 72 guests encompassing 74 podcast appearances from Jan. 1, 2022-July 1, 2022. Almost 90 percent of the guests answered at least one of the questions.
- About 58 percent of our Denver guests identified as white, about 15 percent as Black, about 15 percent as Hispanic/Latinx, about 5 percent as Asian or Asian American, and about 2 percent as Native. About 7 percent identified themselves as having more than one race.
- According to the Census, 52 percent of Denver city residents are non-Hispanic White, 10 percent are Black, 32 percent are Hispanic, 3 percent are Asian, and 1 percent are Native.
- Metro Denver is 70 percent white, 5 percent Black, 18 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian, and 1 percent Native.
- About 48 percent of our guests identified as female. About 44 percent identified as male. About 8 percent identified as non-binary.
- Our Denver guests represented 38 different neighborhoods and towns.
Conclusion
City Cast is doing a pretty good job representing the racial and ethnic diversity, gender diversity, and geographic diversity of Denver. We’re featuring a broad variety of guests, and–with one significant exception–that variety closely matches the actual diversity of the city and the metro area.
The exception is our under-representation of Hispanic/Latinx guests. There are understandable reasons for this shortfall: Many Hispanics and Latinx people are immigrants, and immigrant communities are traditionally hard for journalists to access. Some are probably non-English speakers. Podcast penetration is likely lower among Hispanic/Latinx residents of Denver than among other groups, which makes them less likely to know City Cast Denver and be part of the community we’re building. But it’s clear that we need to push to get more excellent Hispanic/Latinx guests on City Cast Denver.
