New On-Air Source Diversity Data For NPR Shows Much Work Ahead

New research into the diversity of NPR's on-air sources shows that in fiscal year 2018 (ended Sept. 30, 2018), the voices heard on NPR weekday newsmagazines were 83% white and 33% female.

Compared with when we last examined newsmagazine source diversity four years ago (looking at NPR's data from fiscal year 2015), the percentage of white voices on All Things Considered and Morning Edition has gone up noticeably, and the percentage of female sources has gone up modestly. The results vary by program, but they show that the numerous internal efforts in recent years to diversify the sources heard on NPR have had little effect on NPR's numbers overall, even as some of those internal efforts have led to improved source diversity on the weekend shows, in particular (more on that below).

In a memo to the newsroom Friday, , NPR's top news executive for the past year (who was not at NPR during the period studied), wrote, "There's some good news in the numbers and some reasons we should be concerned." She added, "Whatever the reasons, this cannot continue. We have to make significant improvement if we're going to live