Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
“Needless deaths of hardware store cashiers and bus drivers were framed in stories as the sacrifice of ‘heroes’ rather than an outrage and injustice. Or workers were written out of news stories entirely.”
The steady decimation of local news has also decimated the careers of working-class journalists without elite educations. We’ve lost many of the journalists who would have been best suited to cover labor issues exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis and related topics like housing insecurity and the cost of healthcare.
Next year, we should expect stronger demands to recruit staff from a broader range of education backgrounds. This will in turn lead to more editors and writers from a broader range of class backgrounds. We must do this to provide accurate and rigorous coverage of the issues impacting most Americans.