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WHITE WASHED. That's one way to describe college newsrooms, and most of the professional newsrooms I've worked in as well. Over at CampusProgress.org, Justin Elliott, who last year completed a term as executive editor of the excellent Brown Daily Herald, delves into the vicious cycle that contributes to homogeneity in journalism: Low-income and immigrant students can't afford to volunteer time at the paper when they could be working for pay, and their parents don't see journalism as an acceptable career path. The kids who do invest time at the paper are thus more likely to be upper-income and white, and they do a bad job of covering communities of color on campus because they aren't embedded in them socially.
Students of color learn to mistrust the school paper, and then even those students of color who would otherwise be interested in journalism decide not to get involved. The effects trickle right up the journalism career ladder, especially in the magazine world, which provides fewer paid internships for college students and lower-paid entry level jobs. The result is heavily white applicant pools for programs like TAP's writing fellowship and The New Republic's reporter-researcher gig.
I wish Justin had interviewed a few student activists of color who manage relationships with their campus papers -- he sticks to culling opinion from the journalism side of the equation. But he does present some good ideas on how to increase diversity in campus journalism. He profiles the excellent summer program founded at Princeton University by TNR Deputy Editor Richard Just, which puts a select group of low-income high school students through a journalism boot camp and then provides help with college applications and internship placements. Justin also talks to a reporter at Duke who found that even though he was assigned to the "diversity" beat, he continued to misunderstand "the black Duke."
Indeed, it is almost impossible for any publication to adequately cover a segment of the population from which no one on its staff hails. So speaking of philanthropy, progressive donors should start paying more attention to breaking down some of the socioeconomic barriers to journalism careers, and especially to journalism careers in the public interest.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (8)
Unfortunately, such thinking as displayed above tends to result in what I'll call "Urangaism", refering to a specific "reporter". She says her role is to "give voice to people who don't normally have a voice in the paper".
That sounds good, except that she's extended that to include "whitewashing" attempts by the MexicanGovernment to spread propaganda to U.S. public school children.
Aside perhaps from a couple Ray Suarez reports, I can't think of a single Hispanic "reporter" that hasn't been an apologist for illegal immigration. If anyone has any counterexamples (that they're sure I can't poke holes in), please let me know.
Posted by: All about Urangaism | September 6, 2007 4:49 PM
Hail Brunonia! Let's show these UMass-Cambridge punks we mean business!
I count Duncan Black, Josh Marshall, Dana, Mr. elliott, and yours truly me in our column. But UMass-Cambridge brings heavy firepower: Brad DeLong, Yglesias, and I think Neil the ethical Werewolf too. I'm sure there are others.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | September 6, 2007 4:50 PM
And now, for some substantive response.
One, it would be really nice to have income statistics for the families of minority students at Ivies. I would guess that minority students are more likely to have income pressures, but I don't know to what degree.
Two, the observation that tradititonal, higher paying, upper-middle class professions deserves some deeper exploration. It at least seems to jibe with the set of people going into journalism,
Three, this is just another argument that the field of professional journalism would benefit from turning to something like an apprenticeship system for energetic high-school & community college students, or to widening their recruiting pool outside of the J-school/school paper circuit.
Four, yes, pay in these jobs is way low, especially in activist writing. Don't know if there are any good answers there ...
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | September 6, 2007 5:04 PM
The same problems exist in my own field, book publishing, where the pool of young people entering the field is almost entirely upper-middle-class white kids whose parents help to support them. As a result, minority and working-class perspectives are rarely reflected in the profession.
Posted by: Karl Weber | September 6, 2007 5:19 PM
In my limited experience in such matters, minority students at elite colleges are, on the average, more likely to be affluent than the white students. This is because there are so few of them. It is a matter of percentages.
Posted by: captcrisis | September 6, 2007 6:01 PM
As a white majority, I will point out there are a number of fields -- not just advocacy journalism of the left -- where the only path forward is unpaid internships, and that this doesn't just weed out cash-strapped minorities, it also weeds out the working class of any hue. When I was in graduate school, I was doing really well in my TV production classes and had a prof who really liked me, and she tried to get me some field experience. Every single one of them was a full-time, no-pay internship of a year in length, and a couple of them required travel. Without my day job I couldn't have afforded to go to grad school in the first place.
Posted by: SalHepatica | September 6, 2007 6:07 PM
Maybe they just don't want their kids to be whores and liars.
Posted by: merlallen | September 7, 2007 8:18 AM
"Maybe they just don't want their kids to be whores and liars."
Well, then you'll have to explain how they end up being little foot soldiers in corporate finance.
Where their "perspective" is not allowed, in any case. Although, frankly, I'd like to hear to hear what they have to say.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 7, 2007 9:49 AM