A study by Jamie Colette Capuzza, a communication professor at Mount Union University Communication, looked at transgender coverage at three mass-circulation newspapers in the US: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times. Capuzza’s two-part study—one on the news reports and another on the stylebooks—found that transgender identities have been included in the journalistic activities but the representation of them was found to be not multi-dimensional.
Capuzza found 158 stories between 2010 and 2013. The New York Times had 95 stories followed by USA Today with 54 and the Wall Street Journal with nine. The average story length was 736.29 words.
The researcher noted that “stylebooks indirectly continue to define gender within the binary and as stable.” The study also found that the guidelines failed to suggest any option for journalists using the gender-friendly pronouns such as zie or hir, thus showing the limitations of their stylebooks.
To read the full study: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739532916634642
Capuzza, J. C. (2016). Improvements still needed for transgender coverage. Newspaper Research Journal, 37(1), 82-94.
