I came to the realization recently that of all the people I went to school with or know personally that ended up in journalism/media jobs are either white or Hispanic. I thought that was weird but maybe it’s just a weird coincidence. Then I started seeing Black people on Twitter with much more impressive bodies of work than me complaining about never getting hired by publications. Steve and Daric come to mind, specifically. My takes on racism in journalism is another piece though. This time, I want to focus on how journalism is gatekept, intentionally or not, for privileged people.
It reminds me of when Carlos Maza, journalist known for his work on Vox and now does Patreon based writing exclusively, before he expected to get doxed, had to reveal that he came from a wealthy family and they supported him as he got started. He did this so people wouldn’t find out on their own and think less of him, but I think it just verified that this industry only seems to work out for people with certain advantages at the start.
It is incredibly weird for an industry known for its low wages to also gatekeep, but that's where we're at, I guess.
Reporting jobs, in my experience, come in two main varieties: do-it-all for a fraction of what you should be paid because you “love it” and big-time role you’ll only land if you know someone. The former usually banks on you having experience doing the latter, but that’s not the main point.
Those for-the-love jobs are usually smaller publications, maybe print-focused, but they emphasize how little they will pay you. A reporter position in a town 4 hours from me that refused to tell me the pay until I was there in person for an interview comes to mind. These jobs also want you to do multiple jobs for less than one of those jobs should pay on its own. You’re expected to take your own photos or do layout/editing, on top of your reporting responsibilities. This reminds me of student journalism which is notorious for taking advantage of its employees and not compensating them fairly for it.
For-the-love jobs act as if you need to work harder, for less money and financial security because the people making those hiring decisions had to do that when they were getting started. Oftentimes, they got started decades earlier, needed fewer specialized degrees to get their foot in the door, and things (like student debt and housing) were much, much more affordable. These managing editors, in my experience, are almost always old and nearly always white. The difference between their starting experience and mine is usually, they came in with zero experience and were allowed to learn on the job. Unsure why they conveniently forget this detail when they’re trying to pitch you on poverty for the chance to move up once you’ve “served your time”.
These often old and often white editors also value pointless things in a newsroom like aspects of professionalism that don’t mean anything like dress codes or doing the same kinds of stories over and over because the also old and also white people funding the publication like those sorts of pieces. Shit like group shots instead of action ones, feel good stories about cops, etc…
I will never forget an editor telling me that the job in question was “overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated” and expected me to not walk out of the room instantly. Nigga, I got bills. I have to pay rent. I can’t just trudge out less than I can afford to live off for a hypothetical. I don’t understand. This brings me to my biggest issue with for-the-love jobs (besides the terrible wages): the only people who can do them reliably have the privilege of affording to take low wages.
In internships or other extremely low paid or completely unpaid journalism things I’ve done, the majority of people involved were trust fund type white women. People who obviously have never had an hourly job, whose parents supported them through undergrad so they never had to work and could focus exclusively on school. They have random, vague aspirations like blogging about terrier fashion or stupid shit like that and yet they don’t get laughed out of the room when they confidently share that. The reason (and this is me assuming), the people running those internships are also graduates of those unpaid/poorly paid programs. The pay doesn’t matter to them because their parents will keep supporting them financially. They have the luxury of working for experience or networking, exclusively.
The job I’m about to start falls into this category. I was told repeatedly that reporters there aren’t paid much, you’re expected to do layout and photography for $13/hr, full-time. The staff I saw was all older white people. It’s also my 138th journalism job I’ve applied to and the first one to offer me a position. I’m going into this just trying to get it over with and hope I can get something better once I have a non-freelancing role on my resume. Publications seem to gloss over you if you weren’t lucky enough to be able afford taking a low paying job so you’d have a line on your resume. Most of my adult working experience has been unrelated to the things I want to be doing because my rent doesn’t care if my job is fulfilling or in the field of what I want to be doing. Then doing those unrelated jobs means I don’t have time to do the unpaid or poorly paid (upcoming job excluded) work to get the not shitty ones later. It shouldn’t be like that.
The other kind of job, the big-time ones, I have no experience with; just experience applying for and realizing they never intended to give me a chance until it was too late. These jobs pay salaries. You can write about certain topics and only those topics. They’re often based in LA or NYC (and pretty much only those places). They simultaneously want you to have 4-7 years of experience but everyone working there is younger than 27.
These jobs do interviews in multiple rounds i.e. multiple chances for an otherwise qualified candidate to disqualify themselves. They give you editing tests and practice assignments that you are not paid for, despite them taking up hours of your free time. In my experience, they never show you their specific style guide and will penalize you for not sticking to this resource you weren’t given when they evaluate your assignment. These practice assignments are usually after you were required to send in writing samples on your application. If someone actually looked at the samples, a writing assignment would be pointless. But that doesn’t matter.
I’ve never gotten past the second or third round of interviews with these jobs. Usually the timeline for hiring takes weeks or months anyway, much later than would be helpful for the immediacy of my expenses. This is similar to the for-the-love jobs and how they bank on you not needing money right away. They assume you have savings to move across the country or savings to wait weeks between interviews in a months long process in the hopes of getting an offer. They also don’t tell you the pay until the second or third round of interviews and it’s rarely listed on the actual application.
I don’t think I’m going to single-handedly change the nonsense in journalism, especially when it comes to gatekeeping poor, marginalized people. If this is something I actually want to do (and it is because I think I can help people), then I can’t do much besides accept a poorly paying job and hope I can make ends meet until I can get a job more related to what I want to do gives me a chance. As an individual, I don’t have any say in when or where that chance comes from. Time at a publication matters more than where you’ve had work published or how long you’ve been writing. All of that matters less than if the person reading your application (or the automated script filtering your application to an immediate yes/no pile) feels like you deserve a chance in the first place