Breaking the Habit 2.0
Founded in 1844, The Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s most widely read newspapers reaching 6.7 million readers every week across print or digital formats.
Overview
For their pilot, The Globe and Mail was excited to re-commit to an initiative they tried 3 years ago, called “Breaking the Habit.”
In 2016, The Globe challenged staff to increase the extent they sourced women in their stories. For six weeks – the length of time generally considered necessary to develop or break a habit – an email was sent each Monday sharing recommended strategies and followed up each Friday with a mini report card. The effort developed significant momentum within the newsroom, with the phrase “Breaking the Habit” becoming an enduring call-to-action.
Fast forward to April 2019, when The Globe and Mail relaunched Breaking the Habit version 2.0. This time led by Deputy Head of Programming Melissa Stasiuk. Melissa decided to focus on the following activities.
Benchmarking the gender-split of sources
Breaking the Habit 2.0 kicked off with an audit of The Globe’s current record on sourcing women and diverse sources. The results were used in an initial email announcement to build awareness with newsroom staff. The audit involved manually tallying the gender and diversity of bylines, writers, sources and persons in photos for all staff stories, in all sections of the print newspaper, for five weeks. The count was conducted daily by The Globe’s Public Editor, Sylvia Stead, requiring about 20 minutes of her time each morning. Sylvia found that just 28% of sources were women. Read her article sharing the results of her count.
The Globe had also previously developed an automated tool to track gender and diversity in photos. As part of the pilot project and to build on the success of their photo tracker, The Globe’s data science team began investigating the development of an algorithm to track the gender of sources.
Source: Article by Sylvia Stead, Public Editor at The Globe and Mail
“What we are trying to do is break people’s habits. The intention is there, it’s just that when we are busy, we do things the exact same ways as always. ”
Newsroom challenge
At the core of 2.0 was a challenge to reporters to never file a story that did not include at least one female source. The goal was to see how many days each person could go before breaking the streak, and then use that as an opportunity for conversations about challenges and potential solutions. The challenge was voluntary, and reporters were asked to keep track and report their progress periodically. The editing team assisted in keeping track of progress and flagged instances of articles that did not include a female voice as an opportunity for a discussion with the reporter.
Photo: A visual reminder is posted to the screen of The Globe and Mail reporter, James Bradshaw. He has cultivated a list of women sources in the male dominated banking sector, at the CEO, senior executive and board member levels.
“Knowledge is based on what you read and who you hear from. Narrowness of views, and so-called experts who hog the microphones, are often just selling their wares. We support this initiative because we need to think harder about who it is we want to amplify and equally important how we do it. If the same people share the same stage all the time, we reduce our debate at precisely the time our debate needs to be open and wide-ranging.”
Foster positive, ongoing communication
For The Globe, a major focus of the pilot was to encourage ongoing conversation in which staff regularly shared both their challenges and successes towards building gender equality and diversity. The intention was not only for reporters to learn new tips and tricks, but for them to be inspired to action by their colleagues. To encourage these exchanges, Melissa sent out periodic newsletters providing resources and highlighting specific staff experiences, which she gathered by meeting one-on-one with participating reporters.
Source: The Globe and Mail Newsroom
