Opting Out of Journalism's Race to the Bottom
How do you properly complain about sorta going viral, especially when you're sorta going viral because of a complaint in the first place?
It's tough to know how public to be when critiquing your own profession and its labor dynamics. It's harder still for journalists. We pride ourselves on our objectivity (often to a fault, especially when we equate objectivity with mythical middle grounds rather than fairness and transparency) and thus tend to avoid or limit publicly expressing ourselves for fear of tarnishing the credibility of our work. Speaking openly about problems in the profession feels especially fraught for me because I'm currently looking for jobs and freelance opportunities (ahem, please buy my books or hire me).
Last week, I saw a job posting from The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington seeking a reporter specializing in housing and homelessness. I was excited at first. News organizations need more specialized reporting in general. Complex stories about urgent issues like housing or the lack thereof require time, focus, and attention. Writing The Golden Fortress I saw how those broken and uprooted by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl environmental catastrophe were vilified as criminal and pestilent and thought of the dehumanizing ways we still cover homelessness and poverty, so I was encouraged that a local news organization seemed to value surfacing deeper, richer stories about the populations experiencing these challenges. Then I saw the investment they were willing to make: the Columbian (or more clearly, a community-funded initiative) planned to pay the new housing and homelessness reporter $37,440 a year, or about $3,100 a month, before tax and other withholdings. That's in a metro area where the median rent for a one bedroom apartment is around $1,700, and rising (to say nothing of other expenses).
Instead of signal boosting the job posting by resharing it, I commented on Columbian editor Craig Brown's LinkedIn post announcing the opportunity. I followed up my comment with a post of my own explaining why I couldn't share the opportunity in good faith. I'd hesitated to comment or write the ensuing post because I served with Craig on the board of the Oregon/Southwest Washington chapterof the Society of Professional Journalists in 2017-2018. He is a good person and a good journalist, and I didn't want my critique to read as a personal attack. I also understood that Craig is limited by what his organization and its community funding initiative budgeted for the position.
None of that changes the reality of the situation. We can't keep buying into journalism's race to the bottom in pay. As I wrote on LinkedIn, those of us who recognize that have to speak out publicly.
My LinkedIn post elaborates why I felt I needed to speak, so I'm not going to further repeat my arguments. Instead, I thought I'd use this space to sort out how I feel about how a Twitter discussion of the Columbian's ensued.
After I wrote my LinkedIn post I tweeted about it. That tweet had a few likes and retweets from colleagues and friends. I assumed that was that. Then I started receiving a flurry of notifications on my phone alerting me to mentions of my Twitter handle. These were for more frequent mentions than I typically get in a week, let alone an afternoon.
It turned out that New York Times national correspondent Michael Baker had tweeted a screenshot of the Journalismjobs.com job posting listing the Columbian position's salary. Baker also neatly summarized (without commentary) the economic realities of Vancouver any reporter hired for that position would face. Baker ended the tweet with a "h/t" ("hat tip" for the online-abbrievation-uncertain among us) of my handle for calling his attention to the post.
Am I just selfish?
As my phone lit up for the rest of the day with notifications of these mentions, through the second half of the week, and into the weekend, I mostly felt comforted. More people than I expected were talking about the job's inadequate salary and the broader topic of low pay for journalists. Baker's position at the Times makes his a far more visible platform than mine, and his tweet quickly went viral. The notifications I received mostly announced retweets of Baker's original tweet or responses to that tweet that kept my handle intact. They meant I was included in the discussion and could add an additional comment or two when one seemed appropriate. Having had my head down for so long on book research, writing, and promotion (to say nothing of child-rearing during a pandemic) it has been quite some time since I had been so engaged in any social media. I appreciated the chance to offer what I think was a useful contribution to conversations about media and society.
Still, each time I saw Baker's tweet retweeted — salient and concise as it was — I grew increasingly irked that he had only mentioned my handle and hadn't linked either my LinkedIn post discussing the Columbian's job advertisement or my tweet linking to that post. Perhaps I'm being selfish to care about how the discussion that did happen caught fire, but that irked feeling never went away. If Baker had linked one of my initial posts could I have been even further engaged? If someone in Baker's position amplified something I originally wrote could its underlying subject of how unsustainable salaries for journalists harms the communities we serve get greater visibility? Or did Baker's brief but detailed summary provide a digestible snapshot of the economic context surrounding the advertised position's proposed salary that nurtured discussion. He all but certainly has a better understanding of current socio-econo-political dynamics in the Pacific Northwest given his years reporting on the region. I'm not being self critical; the reality of the past decade is that I've focused my journalistic energy writing two books, researching one that didn't (yet) pan out, curating a collection of historic photography, and ghostwriting another multi-year, multi-volume project instead of focusing on daily news reporting.
Baker's tweets (and to be clear this isn't about Baker. It's about the New York Times and institutions, just as the Columbian job's salary isn't about Craig Brown) rightfully command more engagement than mine, but sourcing matters in reporting, even if one's sourcing just a tweet or two. Is a hat tip enough? Wouldn't the "paper of record" want to have the record it produces cited fully in a similar situation? Ultimately, I suspect this issue comes down to how Times social media conventions and practices play out. That would explain its individual reporters' actions, though it wouldn't excuse its institutional oversights.
Pillars of Content Creation
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
A related example arose late Wednesday night (a day before I first posted anything about the Columbian job). Just before I put my phone away and went to bed I saw a tweet sharing a New York Times tweet about breathtaking new images of the so-called "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. The pictures were the latest jaw-dropping captures by the James Webb Space Telescope released by NASA.
Like everyone else, I was duly impressed (even if I joked that they looked to me like a praying mantis). Curious if there were more pictures and eager to see how others were talking about them I opened the Times's tweet and soon saw this response. It noted the Times's watermark on the image and questioned its placement. The Times hadn't captured the images and the news organization shouldn't be credited for them, nor does it own the rights to the image. The credit goes to NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and STScI's Joseph DePasquale, Anton M. Koekemoer, and Alyssa Pagan and the images' rights are in the public domain.
We can't really put a price on the spectacular discoveries and observations these missions are generating, but any value produced belongs to all of us whose taxes funded this remarkable image. Why was the Times claiming credit for an image it had no role in producing? It's so easy to complain about boondoggles and misguided government spending, but just as journalists need to speak out when their contributions aren't properly valued, the public deserves to celebrate where its investments have strengthened society instead of ceding those investments to private entities that wouldn't hesitate to charge the public for benefits they had no hand in funding.
By no means do I think Baker was trying to exploit my tweet to go viral. He can go viral far more easily without me having anything to do with it. I don't even think the Times was trying to profit off the latest images from the Webb (I smell a content management system plunking that iconic "T" on every jpg passing through its digital cogs). I guess I just want to know how people outside of institutions like the Times can make a similar impact. If we're discussing issues like what it costs to inform the public about housing and homelessness, or awe-inspiring scientific discoveries, does it matter who makes the impact, when what matters most is whether as many people as possible hear it?
