City Cast

Our Podcast Guests

How diverse are City Cast Houston’s guests?

When we launched City Cast Houston in late 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?

We ask our City Cast Houston podcast guests about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood.

Here are the results, and below them a few notes on where we can improve.

Houston has data on 42 guests encompassing 48 podcast appearances from Jan. 1, 2022-July 1, 2022. More than 90 percent of the guests answered at least one of the questions.

  • About 50 percent of our Houston guests identified as white, about 12 percent as Black, about 19 percent as Hispanic/Latinx, about 12 percent as Asian or Asian American, and about 5 percent as Middle Eastern.
    • According to the Census, 23 percent of Houston city residents are non-Hispanic white, 22 percent are Black, 50 percent are Hispanic, and 6 percent are Asian.
    • Houston metro is 38 percent white, 17 percent Black, 36 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent Asian.
  • About 46 percent of our Houston guests identified as female. About 51 percent identified as male. About 3 percent identified as non-binary.
  • Our Houston guests represented 17 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 Houston. We’re featuring a broad variety of guests, and–with one significant exception–that variety pretty well 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 Houston than among other groups, which makes them less likely to know City Cast Houston 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 Houston.