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The Privilege of Journalism
In earlier times, a journalist’s biography might have read, “After a stint in the Army, he began his career by covering local events for a small-town newspaper. Later, he made a name for himself covering the civil rights movement before being hired as a national correspondent.” Nowadays, the bio for most journalists is, “Formerly worked in the communications office of (Democratic Politician) or (Left-Wing Activist Group).”
Journalists are increasingly drawn from the ranks of the wealthiest and most privileged. Seriously, there’s no way someone in the middle or working class could work an unpaid media internship in DC or New York while they wait for the break they won’t get because their family has no powerful connections. Twitter ne’er-do-well “Fear the Floof” dug into the backgrounds of some of these Trustafarian media operatives, and got his account suspended for his troubles.
- Taylor Lorenz — the Washington Post twit who specializes in mean-girl attacks, doxxing of people she doesn’t agree with, and pretending to be 22 years old when she’s nearly forty — is the daughter of a wealthy New York developer who grew up in a $5.7 million mansion and attended a Swiss boarding school.
- Matt Yglesias — the not so bright editor from Vox — is the son of very wealthy Hollywood screenwriters and the grandson of a wealthy novelist. This is how the “journalist” was able to pay cash for a high end NYC condominium.
- Ben Collins — the NBC media operative who specializes in campaigns to get people he doesn’t like removed from social media and labeling conservatives as “domestic terrorists” — has almost no internet history at all. Somehow, any details of his background have been completely scrubbed. That he graduated from an exclusive college that costs $75,000 a year to attend is perhaps a clue.
So, if you wonder why journalism seems to be obsessed with wealthy people’s interests — transgender activism, climate change, political games — and indifferent or contemptuous of issues that affect the middle and working classes (crime, inflation, illegal immigration, failing schools, failing public services), this is pretty much why.
Hollywood’s a lot like that, too. Instead of people with real-life experience in front of the camera and writing the scripts, they just pick up rich kids right out of film school who have the generational wealth that lets them work for cheap. And the result is absolute crap.
Published in Journalism
Could be they are all just evil.
I read that long thread yesterday. Posted it in the PIT for everyone’s enjoyment, too.
No surprise he got suspended for it. “Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.”
You wonder how these awful people retain employment, and then you recognize it’s because their billionaire parents likely have their employers by the short ‘n’ curlies.
The beltway class is all nepotism and intermarriage. No wonder their offspring are such dim bulbs.
Absolutely. And as @drewinwisconsin mentioned, they all intermarry or are in and out of various political roles or presidential administrations. Conservatives have theirs too. Tucker Carlson is probably the most obvious example. Maybe this is just more of the same exclusionary elitism/credentialism that permeates a lot of our institutions. You have to know someone or go to the “right” schools, internships, etc to even get your foot in the door. It’s the same for politics, many big prestigious financial firms, media platforms and outlets maybe even more so on the right, in my experience. For all the complaining about Harvard, Yale, Name-That-Ivy university, conservatives still look at a diploma from these places as a hiring bonus. I don’t get it.
There’s definitely a “golden ticket” pipeline that starts much earlier than even college. Journalism, or what passes for it is no different. Gone are the days when experience and willingness to get dirty to chase a story earns credibility. Batya Ungar-Sagon wrote a good book on this, Bad News. And a few years ago HBO put out this excellent documentary about two NYC journalist born of the Old School, Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists. Good post, thanks for bringing this up (and sorry for the rant).
And in the world of nonprofits too. It’s a really closed family.
Post Turtles all the way down.
I think your prior sentence explains why you should get it. Ivy League schools have the reputation of a network of alumni ready to give an edge to their fellow graduates when it comes to hiring. It’s not much different than the reputations of science/engineering schools or medical universities. My BS in Physics from NC State pales in comparison to someone with a similar degree from MIT. However, once in the real world, even those with degrees from prestigious universities must (in most cases) perform.
Aside: I did make a higher overall GPA in Navy Nuke School than an MIT grad, which is how I learned the lesson about performance . . .
And it all mostly started in the 1960s, with Journalism Schools teaching their students how to “change the world”. The J-school degree became the ticket. It’s too bad that their world-changing has been detrimental, not beneficial, to the world.