The Emory Wheel’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) task force has recorded monthly data on each print week’s newspaper since October 2024. DEI developed this project to assess diversity and representation across the newspaper’s coverage. The task force also uses these results to design and implement initiatives that address representation gaps and inequalities. Topic summaries tend to be skewed towards campus events, as the Wheel mainly covers events on campus to highlight the greater Emory University community.
Methodology
The task force designates sections of the newspaper — News, Arts and Life, Opinion and Sports — to different task force members. Their responsibilities include thoroughly reading articles in each section, noting important details and transmitting that information into a database after careful review. The DEI editor(s) is responsible for reviewing and organizing the information for accuracy.
Summary and results
The September 24 issue contains 20 articles in total, including four Sports, three Opinion, six Arts and Life and seven News articles. The DEI task force evaluates the general theme(s) of the articles' topics, allowing members to select multiple themes, such as campus events or politics, simultaneously. For example, 35% of submissions selected campus events as a theme of an article at least once from twelve content types. In this edition, topics primarily focus on campus events, politics and university administrator. Race and ethnicity appear less. Overall, there was one mention of Black identity and another of Middle Eastern identity, but most identity-based data focused on DEI politics. There were no explicit mentions of White, Latinx, Native American or Pacific Islander identity groups. In this edition, none of the articles specifically focused on racial or ethnic identities.
The campus clubs or organizations mentioned in this edition include the Emory Men's and Women's Soccer teams, Emory Volleyball, Kappa Sigma, Alpha Tau Omega, Phi Eta Sigma, the University Senate Committee for Open Expression, Young Democrats of Emory, EmoryUnite!, the Emory Writing Center, the Theater Department, Creative Writing Program, Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program, East Asian Studies Program, the Department of Classics, Peer Health Partners, Emory Police Department and the University Senate.
There are four mentions of right-leaning politics, including terms like extreme conservatism and identity politics removal. There are also three mentions of left-leaning politics, such as “Democrat” or “Union.” This distribution is unequal and right-leaning. This finding demonstrates gaps in centrist and left political representation.
The race and ethnicity summaries highlight the potential for more intentional Pacific Islander and Native American representation in the paper as these metrics have remained consistently low since October 2024. To represent more diverse topics, writers and editors,the Wheel might also consider covering more campus clubs, sexuality and research-related topics. Covering these topics would fill gaps in topic representation.
The goal of the DEI task force is to have fair and equal representation of events and communities at Emory on the Wheel. If you have suggestions for any metrics we should include, please contact us at emorywheeldei@gmail.com.
