Column space in Canadian newspapers remains dominated by middle-aged white males – even while our communities become increasingly more diverse.

Dylan Robertson, a freelance journalist, recently published a piece on J-Source citing a survey that showed new evidence of distorted age and gender representation among Canada’s newspapers columnists.

Seventy three percent of the 339 news and general-interest commentators at 76 English-language daily newspapers looked at in the survey were male at an average age of 58. Women weighed in as the clear minority, numbering only 27% for both national and regional columnists.

The statistics are disappointing, but they should not be surprising.