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 Las Vegas.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
We ask each of our City Cast Las Vegas 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 129 responding guests who collectively made 245 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Las Vegas 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 Las Vegas podcast guests vs. the Las Vegas city/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Las Vegas’s guests mirrored the population in some ways but not in others. We had about the same percentage of guests who are Black, Asian-American, and Pacific Islanders as the community. But we had more white guests and fewer Hispanic/Latinx guests than you’d expect. Only 9% of City Cast Las Vegas guests were Hispanic/Latinx, compared to more than 30% for the city and region.
There are understandable reasons for this shortfall: Many Hispanics and Latinx people are immigrants, and immigrant communities are traditionally hard for journalists outside those communities to access. Some may not consume much English-language media. As a result, Hispanic/Latinx residents of Las Vegas may be less likely to know City Cast Las Vegas and be part of the community we’re building. But we need to keep pushing to get more excellent Hispanic/Latinx guests on City Cast Las Vegas.
The gender identity of City Cast Las Vegas podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 53% majority of our guests identified as female, with 47% identifying as male and 1% identifying as non-binary.
