Journalism Should Be More Than a Rich Kids’ Hobby

Glad to see someone else recognizing this issue as someone from a lower middle class background.

In a previous life I worked in the Policy world - Democratic state level politics in California and the Midwest and a small stint on the Hill. The wages provided were ATROCIOUS. On the Hill, as a staffer you were lucky to earn $50-60k a year working a job that almost always required some amount of graduate education AND a number of unpaid or near unpaid internships - that too in a city where rents and cost of living are roughly comparable to Seattle, Austin, or the Bay. Unsurprisingly, most people who stuck it out were inevitably from upper middle class or upper class backgrounds (the kinds who went to Harker type high schools), and the rest of us filtered out into higher paying roles in the business or tech world. This is a problem in BOTH parties btw - a number of my GOP staffer friends saw similar patterns in their own offices.

This failure to recognize class issues across both aisles is tragic. At least it looks like there is some hope now that the offices of a number of freshman House Reps on both sides of the aisle have been agitating for and starting to receive both union benefits and wage increases, but this is still a piecemeal solution to the larger economic disparities that continue to exist in American discourse.

some journalists on substack making huge bank though. you build your brand for low pay and then go on your own.