The Michigan Daily’s Culture, Training and Inclusion team conducted its fifth survey of Michigan Daily staff in the winter of 2025. Alongside routine demographic questions, this year’s survey added new items to capture staff perspectives on a broad range of work-related topics.
We do not only include the raw findings from the survey, but also trends over time and comparisons and correlations between survey responses. Our hope is that, with new data and new methods of analysis, we might paint a fuller picture of the interplay between representation, background, belonging and experience at The Daily.
Response Breakdown: Demographics
Of the survey respondents, about 62% were staffers — a catch-all category for those who are not editors — 9% were assistant editors, 19% were senior editors and 11% were managing editors or higher. In terms of academic standing, 19% of respondents were freshman, 35% were sophomores, 28% were juniors and 16% were seniors.
The three most represented majors in the survey were english, political science and communication and media. A large share of the most popular majors for survey respondents are social science and humanities, though computer science comprises the largest STEM major in The Daily at 3%. Unsurprisingly, 76% of survey respondents are in LSA.
Twenty-eight out of 50 states were represented in the survey. The majority of the respondents — about 55% — were from Michigan. Other states with the highest proportion of respondents included California with 9% and New York and Illinois with 7% each.
The plurality of respondents, 34%, have a family income of more than $200,000. The same goes for respondents that have at least one parent or guardian who has received a doctorate or professional degree. 34% of respondents have been diagnosed with a mental health condition, the most common of which are Generalized Anxiety Disorder and ADHD. Almost 80% of survey respondents work less than 10 hours a week, with the plurality, 36%, not working at all.
72% of respondents use she/her/hers pronouns, 22% use he/him/his pronouns, 5% use they/them/theirs pronouns and 1% use other sets of pronouns. 55% of respondents identify as heterosexual, 14% as bisexual, 11% as queer and 7% as lesbian. 52% of survey respondents identify as white, 28% identify as Asian, 10% identify as Hispanic or Latinx, 6% identify as Middle Eastern or North African and 3% identify as Black.
Trends over time and comparisons
For several categories of data collected, the same questions were asked in previous demographic surveys, allowing us to build a picture of The Daily’s change in demographics over time.
For the first time since at least the fall 2022 survey, there were more in-state respondents to the survey than out-of-state respondents. The proportion of in-state respondents was slightly higher than the University of Michigan’s undergraduate proportion of in-state students, 52%.
Over that same time period, the proportion of respondents that were freshmen and seniors diminished, while the proportion of respondents that were sophomores and juniors increased.
When looking at this time series data, the increase in proportion of survey respondents from underrepresented groups is clear. There has been an increase in survey representation from all sexualities but heterosexual since the fall 2022 survey, the proportion of survey respondents with a family income more than $200,000 is also at its lowest level ever recorded in a Daily demographics survey, the proportion of survey respondents that were international students increased by 5% and the proportion who were first-generation students increased by 7% since fall 2023. There have also been increases in survey representation from all parental education levels except master’s degrees since fall 2023.
When it comes to race, relative levels of race representation in the survey response have nearly stayed the same, barring staffers who identify as Hispanic/Latinx. The largest decrease in representation was white survey respondents by 5% and the largest increase in representation was Hispanic/Latinx staffers by 7%. White and Asian staffers still remain overrepresented in The Daily’s staff, when compared to overall undergraduate statistics. The representation of underrepresented groups in the survey was concentrated in just a few sections. There are three sections for which the percentage of non-white staffers falls off from a roughly linear trend. When removing those sections from the survey, The Daily loses about 37% of its Black survey respondents and 28% of its Asian respondents.
The proportion of survey respondents who use she/her/hers pronouns increased by almost 5% since fall 2023, while the proportion of respondents who use he/him/his pronouns decreased by 5%.
Conclusion
Broadly speaking, our findings lend themselves to the conclusion that The Daily has made substantive progress when it comes to increasing the representation of historically underrepresented groups in its staff. However, the representation of many of these groups still lie below their University-wide levels, meaning that there is more work to be done.
Methodology
To conduct this survey, CTI distributed a 50 question anonymous Qualtrics survey through electronic communication and flyering. In a newsroom of more than 500 students, the survey received 248 responses — 22 more than the winter 2023 demographics survey. This increase in response may have been a result of the incentive of survey completion entering the staffer in a $25 raffle.
The survey was open from March 21 to April 4. After closing, the data was processed into an Excel sheet and categorical data was transformed into numerical representations (binary for yes-or-no questions, scales for questions with a spectrum of answers) for easier analysis using Python programming. A correlation matrix of this was generated to lead our analysis and the generation of plots.
For questions or comments, please email accessandinclusion@umich.edu.
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