A Diversity of Opinion

The Post needs more opinion writers and columnists who are of the female persuasion or are minorities. Overwhelmingly, Post columnists are white guys. Some are among the paper's best columnists, but more diversity would make The Post a richer paper.

Numerical equality is not what readers look for, but women and minorities want to see themselves well represented in the news and opinion pages of The Post. This is a remarkably diverse region, and that should be better reflected in columnist jobs.

When it comes to columnists, figuring out whom to count is complicated. I'm only counting those who write at least twice a month; I'm not including critics, super-niche columnists or reporters who write Notebook columns.

Here's my audit of the columnists whose opinions are splashed across The Post's pages:

Metro's columnists are Marc Fisher, John Kelly and Courtland Milloy. A female voice is missing because Donna Britt is on extended book leave. Add Dr. Gridlock, the alter ego of Robert Thomson, and that makes four men. Milloy and Britt are black.

In Business: Steven Pearlstein, jack-of-all-financial-trades; the Federal Diary's Stephen Barr; Michelle Singletary, the personal finance columnist; Martha H. Hamilton, who writes on retirement finances; auto columnist Warren Brown; lobbying columnist Jeffrey H. Birnbaum; Life at Work columnist Amy Joyce; and technology columnists Mike Musgrove and Rob Pegoraro. Plus Cindy Skrzycki, who writes the Regulators, and Allan Sloan of Newsweek. Seven men to four women. Brown and Singletary are black.

Guys rule in sports -- Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Thomas Boswell, Mike Wise, Angus Phillips, George Solomon, Sally Jenkins. Six men to one woman. Wilbon is black.

In National: In the Loop's Al Kamen and Washington Sketch columnist Dana Milbank, who has been mostly on book leave for the past few months. Politicians, be very, very afraid -- he returns full time in January. Two men.

Appearing in Style are TV columnist Lisa de Moraes and Robin Givhan on fashion. Peter Carlson writes on magazines, Marguerite Kelly does Family Almanac and Amy Dickinson does Ask Amy. Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger are the Reliable Source. Carolyn Hax gives advice, Art Buchwald provides humor, and Howard Kurtz opines on the media. Three men, seven women. Givhan is black. It's the only section with more women than men writing columns.

A huge majority of op-ed columnists are white men. Post columnists are David S. Broder, David Ignatius, Jim Hoagland, Eugene Robinson, Richard Cohen, Colbert I. King, Ruth Marcus, Sebastian Mallaby, Harold Meyerson and Anne Applebaum. Frequently used syndicated columnists are Fareed Zakaria, E.J. Dionne, Michael Kinsley, Robert D. Novak, George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer and Robert J. Samuelson. All but Kinsley and Novak are syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. The columns of Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt and his deputy Jackson Diehl run every other week. Plus me. That's 17 men to three women. Zakaria was born in India, and King and Robinson are black.

The Magazine has Joel Achenbach, Gene Weingarten the outrageous and Jeanne Marie Laskas. Two to one.

Outlook has the Zeitgeist Checklist, mostly done by Milbank or Michael Grunwald, and alternating Slate columnists Dahlia Lithwick and William Saletan. Two to one.