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 guest demographics is a way to hold us accountable for representing the diversity of Salt Lake.
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 Salt Lake’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 115 responding guests who collectively made 154 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Salt Lake 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 Salt Lake podcast guests vs. the Salt Lake City/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Salt Lake’s guests broadly mirrored the population of the city and region. We had a significantly higher percentage of Black guests than the city and metro area, and a slightly higher percentage of white and Asian-American guests than the community. But City Cast Salt Lake had about half the Hispanic guests you’d expect based on Salt Lake’s population–only 10% compared to 20% for the city.
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 Salt Lake may be less likely to know City Cast Salt Lake 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 Salt Lake.
The gender identity of City Cast Salt Lake podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 58% majority of our guests identified as female, with 41% identifying as male and 1% identifying as non-binary. City Cast Salt Lake had the highest percentage of female guests of any podcast in the 11-city City Cast network.
