Staff Demographics

The News is committed to building a diverse newsroom that reflects its readership. To track our progress and hold ourselves accountable to that commitment, we will publish our staff demographics on this page at least once a year.

The News conducted its first demographic survey in the 2018-19 school year, beginning solely with the managing board. The past three years’ surveys were sent to our entire staff. The following data comes from the most recent survey, conducted in the spring of 2023. In total, 150 staff members responded, though not all students elected to respond to every question. 

Some of the figures below compare our newsroom demographics to those of the University broadly; sources are generally listed below each figure, but where omitted, Yale demographic data comes from the Office of Institutional Research.

Quick Facts

  • 62 percent of our staffers identify as female. 37 percent identify as male. 91 percent identify as cisgender. 8 percent identify as nonbinary and/or transgender.
  • 31 percent of our staffers identify with the label LGBTQ+. 61 percent of our staffers do not. 7 percent indicated a questioning status or chose not to answer. 
  • About 15 percent of our staffers are international students, as compared to 10 percent of Yale College and 22 percent of the University as a whole.
  • 14 percent of our staffers are the first in their families to go to college, and about 33 percent are the first in their families to attend a 4-year university in the United States. 16 percent of students in the class of 2025 described themselves as first-generation. 
  • 56 percent of our staffers have no prior journalism experience. 
  • Of the about 100 staffers who chose to describe their high school communities, 48.65 percent selected suburban, 38.51 percent selected urban and 12.84 percent selected rural. According to comments from Yale admissions officers, roughly 5% of an incoming class at Yale identify as rural or small-town students.

Where did the News go to high school?

103 of our 150 respondents shared information about where they attended high school.

Race and ethnicity

The News’ survey included options for Asian respondents to specify South, East or Southeast Asian. For the purpose of this graph, all such respondents are grouped together as Asian. 

While some News’ respondents who are not from the United States also shared information about their race and ethnicity, they are only included in the “International” category to comply as closely as possible with Yale’s categorizations.

Yale employs a separate has a separate “Two or More” category; we put News’ respondents who indicated multiple racial groups in that category as opposed to the specific groups listed. The News’ also asked respondents to self-select Latine and/or Hispanic, or to mark neither. Students who marked Hispanic are in the “Hispanic of any race” category, but not in any of the other race-based categories, for the sake of comparison; students who marked Latine but not Hispanic are relfected in the other racial categories.

The News’ survey also included an option for Middle Eastern/North African — students who selected that as their only answer are included in the “Other or unknown” category; else, they are reallotted to the next racial/ethic category indicated.

Financial aid