Why we are launching the Inside Housing Diverse Comment Project
Inside Housing is launching a project to expand who is writing opinion pieces for us. Jess McCabe explains why
Every so often, one of the editorial team at Inside Housing gets an email along the lines of: ‘I just looked at your latest bulletin, and all the faces I saw were of men’, or: ‘Why are all the people I can see in your comment section right now white?’.
“The balance of contributors is something Inside Housing’s editorial team discusses on a weekly basis. Yet those numbers have proved frustratingly difficult to shift”
It’s not a new question to us at Inside Housing. We did our first diversity audit back in 2018. Analysing our own coverage, we found that only 7% of comment pieces were written by Black, Asian or minority ethnic people, and 62% were written by men.
The balance of contributors is something Inside Housing’s editorial team discusses on a weekly basis. Yet those numbers have proved frustratingly difficult to shift. Let me explain a little bit about why, and then I want to introduce you to our new project, which aims to change that.
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First, we need to consider how someone gets a comment piece published by Inside Housing. In some cases, that is because one of us editors has noticed someone in the sector is doing or saying something interesting and approached that particular person to write for us.
We also have our IH50 group of regular columnists.
But, most of the time, someone calls or emails with an idea, asking to write. If we find their idea interesting or think it’s relevant to our readers, we tell that person to go ahead. That could be an approach from an individual, the comms team of a housing association, a council, the government, a charity or think-tank.
“Opinion pieces are about stating something with a defined point of view, and making an argument. It’s putting yourself out there”
Over the years, we’ve tracked data on what those comment pitches look like, and there is a consistent trend. The vast majority are from white men, even though we know that the actual leadership of the housing sector is much more diverse than that – particularly in terms of gender, with women holding around 40% of executive jobs.
We can speculate about why this is happening. There are the subconscious factors that go into the type of person any organisation thinks of when they decide to put someone forward to write on their behalf.
However, writing an opinion piece is something not everyone is keen to do. Opinion pieces are about stating something with a defined point of view, and making an argument. It’s putting yourself out there.
In March, for International Women’s Day, we decided to commission a whole week of comment only by women. More than once, the response from women we approached was hesitancy. Did they have anything sufficiently interesting to say? Were they senior enough to talk? Would readers be interested? Will there be a backlash on social media? Even though we were specifically asking them to contribute, and identifying the value of their views to Inside Housing and our readers, women voiced these worries to us more than once.
There are significant reasons then, why Inside Housing’s comment section often doesn’t look as diverse as the people who actually work in the sector. And, so far, our efforts stretching back several years haven’t been enough to change that.
“We hope that this change in how we commission the columns and opinion pieces you read here will lead to a greater diversity of thought and perspectives”
So what next? Our answer is to launch the Inside Housing Diverse Comment Project, and our aim is to explicitly increase the number and diversity of voices you’re reading from across the sector and beyond. This project has been designed with input from our Inside Housing Race and Housing editorial panel.
It’s an email list for people who, so far, have been under-represented in our comment section. I’ve talked a bit about race and gender here, but that also means disabled people, LGBTQ people and tenants.
Each week, Inside Housing will send a quick email to people who have signed up to this list, with suggestions on topics for comment pieces, led by the big news stories that week. Anyone on the list can then reply, putting themselves forward to write, and we will take it from there.
We hope that this change in how we commission the columns and opinion pieces you read here will lead to a greater diversity of thought and perspectives. The ultimate aim of that is to bring you a better and more diverse set of ideas and responses to what is going on in the sector – one that is more representative and balanced. That should benefit everyone.
Jess McCabe, deputy editor (features), Inside Housing
