He Wrote,She Wrote

Abstract

This study examines the intersection of journalist gender and campaign news coverage across legislative and executive political offices in a gender-prominent context: mixed-gender elections—those with at least one woman and one man. Based on a content analysis of U.S. newspaper coverage, this study focuses on “masculinized” and “feminized” political issues and character traits, and explicit references that highlight a candidate’s novelty. Results revealed no direct relationship between journalist gender and news coverage; however, when type of office was considered, there were significant shifts and differences in the focus of coverage by female and male journalists.