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 Portland.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
We ask each of our City Cast Portland 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 131 responding guests who collectively made 202 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Portland 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 Portland podcast guests vs. the Portland city/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Portland’s guests broadly mirrored the population. Our guests were slightly whiter than the city and metro area. We also had a slightly higher percentage of Black guests than the community. And we had somewhat fewer Hispanic/Latinx and Asian-American guests than you’d expect.
The gender identity of City Cast Portland podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. About 48% of our guests identified as male, and 47% identifying as female. More than 5% identified as nonbinary, the highest percentage of any podcast in the 11-city City Cast network.
