Despite how polarized America has become, there is one thing that everyone seems to agree on: the media is broken.
And while a lot of the blame goes toward things like bias, another less known issue is the working conditions at most publications. In short, a lot of quality up-and-coming journalists (like Carrington Tatum) can no longer afford to work in the industry:
“The math showed my best option was to move back home and find a job in a different industry. Everything I did wasn’t enough to keep me out of my mother’s house. And as I have had time to think about what went wrong, I realized that if I’m going to stay ahead of student loans and survive, I need to make a lot more money. I can’t afford to stay in journalism. Reporting doesn’t pay enough to cover the cost of entering the field and the cost of increasingly expensive cities.
… And that not only hurts me, but the journalism I could be doing.”
A visit to r/ journalism bears this out, with many of the posts highlighting the low pay, outrageous expectations and death threats. Questions like “How realistic are these weird hours at journalism jobs?,”How do you manage social media burnout?,” and “What type of jobs in journalism is best for being safe and alive for the longest?” are about as common as questions over ethics.
This impacts the quality of reporting we require to be a “well informed citizenry,” because it is nearly impossible for an overburdened, broke and frightened journalist to do their job correctly.