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 Pittsburgh.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
We ask each of our City Cast Pittsburgh 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 108 responding guests who collectively made 141 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Pittsburgh 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 Pittsburgh podcast guests vs. the Pittsburgh city/metro population.
Pittsburgh is an overwhelmingly white city and metro area, and City Cast Pittsburgh’s guest pool mirrored that, and was even slightly more white than the community. City Cast Pittsburgh had a much lower percentage of Black guests (5%) than the city (19%), and also had a lower percentage of Asian-American guests than the community. Based on these data, we can do a better job representing Pittsburgh’s racial and ethnic diversity than we did in 2023.
The gender identity of City Cast Pittsburgh podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 52% majority of our guests identified as female, with 44% identifying as male and 3% identifying as non-binary.
