Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, writes in Columbia Journalism Review about the need for journalists with lower socio-economic status covering economic issues.
Quart writes, “What would that media look like? It would be one where economic reporters are embedded in blue-collar communities and neighborhoods rather than financial districts, and source networks built around people with direct experience instead of outside analysts. Centering inflation coverage around wage stagnation rather than the stock market and written for people who live paycheck to paycheck. Healthcare reporting would be conducted by those who have experienced medical debt. Labor reporting that represents workers not as mute sufferers but as true experts. Housing that is considered from the perspective of the renter, not the landlord or developer.
“Some examples of publications where this is happening include small entities like the housing publication Shelterforce but also, on occasion, legacy publications, for example Esquire, which recently published ‘The Invisible Man,’ an excellent firsthand account of homelessness.
“While Americans in polls report historically low levels of trust in the media, it could be in large part because much of the press hasn’t been speaking to the concerns of their everyday lives. It would mean incorporating the knowledge and skills of reporters like Heather Bryant, who grew up in rural Missouri, where her lower-income family would buy a newspaper only to obtain something particular from its pages, usually from the classifieds.”
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