Journalism ‘Class’:
On a tip from Bookslut, I checked out the website of the Columbia Journalism Review and came across this amazing article by Brett Cunnigham about how the class bias effects journalistic coverage of working class communities and citizens. It is a gorgeously written, subtle, intelligent piece that avoids being shrill or preachy, or succumbing to precisely the slanted perspective it criticizes. I read it three times then marched into the living room and thrust it at Suzan.
“You MUST read this.”
If this is the level of work CJR does, I’m subscribing tomorrow.
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4 Replies to “Journalism ‘Class’:”
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Eh. Brent’s a good guy, but he commits the cardinal sin of media writing — assuming that the people who work at the New York Times equal “journalists” as a whole. Yes, reporters at the NYT do just fine financially. No, most reporters do not. The vast majority of reporters make less money than the teachers in their community.
Anyway, I find calls for reporters to be more reflective of America in terms of education silly. Do you really want 20% of reporters to be high school dropouts? The people at the NYT (and the other respected national media outlets) are in the top 5% of their profession. I’d certainly expect them to be better educated than most and better compensated than most.
I’d agree with Russ Baker that the Washington news operations have more than a whiff of moral bankruptcy and class privilege. But that’s *always* been the case and has more to do with the insular, self-reflecting nature of the Beltway — you’ve *never* seen a lot of poverty coverage coming out of Washington bureaus.
One last thing: Newspapers are, by their nature, largely reflective of the political culture around them. In the ’60s, with the War on Poverty, of course you saw more stories on poverty. (Also, poverty was significantly more common in America then.) Today, neither party is talking about it, so you don’t see as much of it in the paper. I don’t think the answer is more newsprint crusades.
Eh. Brent’s a good guy, but he commits the cardinal sin of media writing — assuming that the people who work at the New York Times equal “journalists” as a whole. Yes, reporters at the NYT do just fine financially. No, most reporters do not. The vast majority of reporters make less money than the teachers in their community.
Anyway, I find calls for reporters to be more reflective of America in terms of education silly. Do you really want 20% of reporters to be high school dropouts? The people at the NYT (and the other respected national media outlets) are in the top 5% of their profession. I’d certainly expect them to be better educated than most and better compensated than most.
I’d agree with Russ Baker that the Washington news operations have more than a whiff of moral bankruptcy and class privilege. But that’s *always* been the case and has more to do with the insular, self-reflecting nature of the Beltway — you’ve *never* seen a lot of poverty coverage coming out of Washington bureaus.
One last thing: Newspapers are, by their nature, largely reflective of the political culture around them. In the ’60s, with the War on Poverty, of course you saw more stories on poverty. (Also, poverty was significantly more common in America then.) Today, neither party is talking about it, so you don’t see as much of it in the paper. I don’t think the answer is more newsprint crusades.
I don’t think so either, Josh and if the piece does step wrong for me, it does so by not addressing the larger question…What do we expect out of our newspapers? Justic, Social Change? The Weather? And have our expectations changed with the availability of most of that information elsewhere?
I don’t think so either, Josh and if the piece does step wrong for me, it does so by not addressing the larger question…What do we expect out of our newspapers? Justic, Social Change? The Weather? And have our expectations changed with the availability of most of that information elsewhere?