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 Houston.
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 Houston’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 113 responding guests who collectively made 152 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Houston 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 Houston podcast guests vs. the Houston city/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Houston had a higher percentage of white and Asian-American guests than the city and metro area, and about the same percentage of Black guests as the community. City Cast Houston also had a number of Middle Eastern guests, a category we survey for but the Census does not. City Cast Houston had about a quarter the Hispanic guests you’d expect based on Houston’s population–only 11% compared to 39% for the metro area.
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 Houston may be less likely to know City Cast Houston 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 Houston.
The gender identity of City Cast Houston podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 65% majority of our guests identified as male, with 34% identifying as female and 2% identifying as non-binary. City Cast Houston had the highest percentage of male guests of any podcast in the 11-city City Cast network.
