San Francisco Chronicle Readies Audit Of Newspaper to Check Progress with Inclusion.

After the newspaper "San Francisco Chronicle" readers' representative Dick Rogers received an inquiry from a reader asking about the newspaper's accuracy in reflecting the makeup of the community it serves, Rogers embarked on an analysis that led him to believe the paper was underperforming in the area of inclusion. Rogers asked his editorial assistant, Shelah Moody, to count "every face that appeared in every photo on the front of the Chronicle sections for a month," he wrote in a February 25 2004 column. "We randomly picked December. Nearly 2,000 images were categorized by race and gender. The results were eyeopening," Roger said. By gender, the newspaper's Datebook section came closest to balance, and it still had an 18-point disparity, 59% male, 41% female. Next was Bay Area at 68% male and 32% female, the front page at 72% and 28%, Business nearly the same at 76% and 24%, and Sports a whopping 90% male and 10% female. Moody and Rogers looked at race as well as gender. Rogers points out in this column that numbers alone don't explain much and by themselves, shouldn't dictate news coverage.