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 Denver.
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 Denver’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 140 responding guests who collectively made 201 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Denver 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 Denver podcast guests vs. the Denver city/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Denver’s guests broadly mirrored the population of the city and region. We had a higher percentage of Black and Native American guests than the city and metro area, and a slightly lower percentage of white guests than the community. But City Cast Denver had fewer Hispanic guests than you’d expect based on Denver’s population–only 17% compared to 29% for the city.
We slightly increased the percentage of Hispanic guests between 2022 and 2023 (from 15% to 17%), 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 Denver may be less likely to know City Cast Denver 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 Denver.
The gender identity of City Cast Denver podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 57% majority of our guests identified as male, with 38% identifying as female and 4% identifying as non-binary.
