Journalism shouldn't be so professionalized
A crisis of diversity
Uber and ride-sharing in general get a lot of flak in the press for some reason. Take this piece from the NYT:
Piece by piece, the mythology around ridesharing is falling apart. Uber and Lyft promised ubiquitous self-driving cars as soon as this year. They promised an end to private car ownership. They promised to reduce congestion in the largest cities. They promised consistently affordable rides. They promised to boost public transit use. They promised profitable business models. They promised a surfeit of well-paying jobs. Heck, they even promised flying cars.
No other company has to justify its existence as much as Uber. They’re fighting for their right to exist in the face of media and government scrutiny. All for the sin of offering people a more convenient way to book a taxi.
It’s all remnants of grievances regional taxi companies had over facing competition with some workers rights arguments thrown in to boot. Never mind the rights of people trying to book a cab. For instance, it’s well established that cab drivers discriminate on race. You would think the solution would be to allow companies to serve the underserved. Alas, it’s not enough training that’s the problem:
The Taxi and Limousine Commission will form an Office of Inclusion, which would develop anti-discrimination training for drivers, expand public outreach to encourage people to report drivers for refusing to pick them up, and take part in the prosecution of those drivers.
Who writes this shit?
I won’t rehash arguments why an app that I can use to book cab rides anywhere in the world is useful and should be allowed to exist. But I was curious about the author of the piece. I found out he is a career journalist with a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University. In his professional life, he had never held a position outside of reporter or journalist. Which begs the question, what makes this man uniquely suited to be molding the national dialog?
Here are the last 5 articles written by the author:
The articles can be summarized as Facebook bad, digital maps bad, Apple bad, Tesla bad and big-tech bad. You can find essentially the same articles across most major publications. Whats shocking is that the man writing these brilliant, original think pieces has no professional experience in programming, cartography, engineering, AI or cryptography. He writes these kinds of articles for a living and did so his entire adult life. His ideas are entirely predictable and unoriginal. Without knowing anything else, what do you think the author thinks about fracking? Brexit?
News has become such an insular profession that this is increasingly the profile of journalists working for major publications. Journalists crafting our vision of the world come from the same place, took the same classes, interacted with the same people and had the same life experiences as their peers. Journalists likely never ran a business, made hiring decisions, developed an app or had any meaningful professional experiences apart from writing. Why are these people leading the national dialog for millions of people?
Diversity is important in discussing large complex ideas. But diversity has come to mean a member of a historically disadvantaged group. But diversity means more than that. I would love to hear the opinion of someone who struggled to get a cab home prior to Uber because they lived in the wrong part of town. Or someone who built something and can shed insight into new technology. Instead our NY Times op-ed thought leaders are as follows:
Ezra Klein: Worked for Howard Dean campaign and interned at Washington Monthly after graduating with a political science degree from University of California. Klein is married to a journalist
Jamelle Bouie: Worked at American Prospect shortly after graduating in political and social thought and government from University of Virginia
Michelle Goldberg: Worked at Salon after a masters in journalism from University of California
Paul Krugman: Career academic with a brief stint serving on Council of Economic advisers for Regan administration.
Gail Collins: Started writing for Connecticut publications after a bachelors in journalism and a masters in government
They’re all like this. And the younger journalists (Klien, Bouie and Goldberg) tend to come from the same universities. Apart from Krugman, their life accomplishments include writing a thoughtful think piece on Mitt Romney’s magic underwear and criticizing a pro-motherhood op-ed by Mitt Romney’s wife. Maybe even a book popular at airports.
Are these people really the best and brightest?
Do you really need 6 years of college to write an “Uber bad” piece? The writing is often terrible anyway. I would rather they spend a year driving for Uber, or working any job really.
A better model is what Bari Weiss is doing at Substack. She commissions op-eds from a diverse group of people. The authors often include journalists and professors, but they’re selected for a unique insight or experience into the subject. I don’t need to know what the person that is skeptical of Uber, Amazon and tech surveillance thinks about Tesla.
Ironically Weiss was doing just that for the NY Times when she was pushed out for allowing the thoughts of a sitting US Senator grace the pages of NY Times op-ed. To be fair, the author proposed a measure supported by 52% of Americans and ~0% of NY Times employees.
When opinion bleeds into hard news
It would be fine if regurgitation of the same talking points were restricted to op-ed. But it often influences hard news coverage as well. I don’t mind that NY Times chose to report on Trump dossier and not on Hunter Biden’s laptop leak, but I do mind that nearly every other publication and social network made the same exact decision at the same time.
Thankfully there are alternatives for now, although that’s under attack as well. I guess the best we can do is tune out.