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Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were

Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Indeed, in many aspects, the latter would seem to share many aspects with learning to code (attention to detail, focus on syntax, etc.), and be more accessible. My conclusion is that there is no desire to increase participation in or accessibility to the field of journalism, because of a rejection of the Jevons paradox. And consequently, the shrinking field seems to rely heavily on credentialism and connections to choose who becomes a journalist.

whimsicalism 5y ago
This hits the nail on the head. All of my friends who are in the process of becoming journalists have to spend tons of time working unpaid shitty internships just to get a low paying bottom rung job. The only people I know who are even able to get jobs like this either have parents in the industry or have rich parents, often both. This is also true for the humanities in academia writ large - most of the people I know getting a PhD in the humanities have rich parents.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  The cause is pretty obvious: journalists and other humanities do not pay well. People are not willing to pay for the garbage modern journalists put out, so there is not much money in the field. The only people going into the field, therefore, are those who are independently rich (rich parents) and ideologically motivated (which further reduces the quality of modern journalism).
  - goatlover 5y ago
    Sounds like a problem with politicians as well, particularly beyond the local level.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Journalism and the humanities can pay extremely well for insiders. The humanities - especially law and some corners of academia - also have far more direct political leverage than tech does.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      As a (former) lawyer, I wouldn’t clump together law and humanities for this purpose. Many law students and lawyers didn’t major in humanities subjects, and the earning power of lawyers is far greater than academics in the humanities.
not2b 5y ago
Also, for many of the prestigious publications, the way into the door is often via unpaid internships, and interns who do really well eventually get paying jobs. Only those whose families can support them well into their 20s can afford to do that.
throwaway2077 5y ago
you got outdated info. "learn to code" gets people unpersoned on twitter now
dayvid 5y ago
People hate on tech interviews, but it's honestly a lot more fair than traditional interviewing if done properly. You only gauge the candidate on their ability to solve and think through a problem. I also follow a trainer's pattern who doesn't read the candidate's resume before a technical screen to further reduce bias.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  In the actual tech world, my view is that these critics are a loud minority who forget what the alternatives look like. As an awkward autistic guy who often gets mistaken for hispanic, the tech interviews are a god-send.
  - thenanyu 5y ago
    There are better signals you could get of job success but they require a greater up front investment; I’ve had a good track record with a slightly lower bar on the technical screen and a 30 day probationary period. Some friends of mine user a 2 week work trial for all candidates.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      I can't imagine a high-quality candidate agreeing to either of those things in the current market. I certainly wouldn't. But software engineering is very bimodal, so I'm sure it works.
      - thenanyu 5y ago
        The conditions certainly have to be right but it works for high quality candidates if your reputation is good and you engender enough trust. High quality candidates are generally confident in their abilities and thankful that they can take 2 weeks to show you their skills instead of doing it in a high pressure setting in a couple of hours.
        5y ago
rayiner 5y ago
> Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. This is one of my concerns about the recent antipathy toward standardized testing. My family came over from Bangladesh, at a time when there were less than 10,000 Bangladeshis in the U.S. Didn't have much cultural knowledge, didn't know anybody important, and it didn't matter. Did well on the SATs, did well on the LSATs--in either engineering or law, being a foreigner didn't hold me back. Not sure what would've happened if those objective measures hadn't existed. (I mean I guess I do know what happened--family connections mattered a lot more in e.g. the legal field back in the day.)
- skulk 5y ago
  What do you think about the system on the subcontinent? I'm not sure how it's done in Bangladesh, but in India your higher education is basically decided by your score on a few objective measures which are orders of magnitude more difficult than the SAT. It's actually mind-boggling how much harder IIT JEE math is compared to SAT math.
  - zeusk 5y ago
    The physics and chemistry aren't any easier. I'd say at-least Physics had the largest delta compared to SAT subject tests or even APs. While the SAT was asking about basic kinetic motion in classical mechanics, JEE was asking about wave-particle duality and calculating uncertainty in motion of photon-electron collisions iirc.
  - thenanyu 5y ago
    Chinese Gao Kao tests are similarly much harder than American tests; but at the end of the day I don’t think absolute difficulty matters too much as it’s a comparative test. As long as there is differentiation it does it’s job. If the test taking population is very large the tests might need to be more difficult to make finer distinction
Zababa 5y ago
> I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". It's easy: they want to protect their field. This is basically a "not in my backyard" movement. "X industry should be more diverse. Not mine, because that would means more competition for me."
- gorwell 5y ago
  It's also a large amount of psychological projection and intra elite jockeying. Naval hit the nail on the head here: `The whole Social Justice Warrior-ing trend seems like a case of white-on-white violence.` https://twitter.com/naval/status/1132170896817266688 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1132170896817266688
kodah 5y ago
This may be an unpopular opinion: > Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. Is tech really that different? * When evaluating senior candidates one of the criteria that candidates are selected on is the prestige of their previous companies, which usually hire from prestigious universities. * Much of what we look at is how many talks a senior candidate has done, their name recognition (aka brand), etc... all indicators of prestige, but not necessarily talent. * When evaluating junior candidates with a lack of job experience the candidate pool is often selected on collegiate prestige. * Hiring is often done by algorithm interviews which, if you went to a prestigious school, are what they spend more time teaching. I've been programming my whole life, but I'm a drop out and spent a chunk of my formative years in the military. The only way I got into being a full time SWE was working as a SRE-SE first. I would've never gotten one of these kush internships had I not spent years putting out other peoples software fires first.
- teebs 5y ago
  I agree with you that it's definitely about who you know - if you go to Stanford, you can get better jobs out of college compared to someone with similar skills who didn't. But I worked at a FAANG (or whatever it's called now) company and many of the senior engineers we hired were from small/less prestigious companies. These were people with ~10 years of experience who had become great software engineers but had never considered themselves in a class to work in big tech. Then, when given a chance, they got an offer and often accepted it because it paid so much better than their old job. If there weren't such high demand for software engineers, the company would just have hired from other big tech companies since it's safer, but they were forced to try to find people in unexpected places. On the other hand, these people were still negatively impacted by their backgrounds: they hadn't had the chance to join fancy tech companies out of college, which meant they missed out on several years of career opportunities. They were more likely to be hired at a Senior Software Engineer level, for example, when someone similar from a big tech company might be hired at Staff+.
  - kodah 5y ago
dogleash 5y ago
>I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist" A few years ago when some journos got laid off, people on twitter meme-ed that they should learn to code. Not only did the journos make it extremely apparent just how far beneath them they think software development is, they also went out of their way to attack the people ribbing them. (With their standard tools: guilt by association to 4chan who got in on the ribbing, and getting twitter to categorize criticism in the wrong direction as abuse.) https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code It's not the reason, but analyzing this sort of thing is a start.
ASinclair 5y ago
> I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Software pays significantly more. Why push people into lower paying jobs?
- Iefthandrule 5y ago
  You don't see narratives about how everyone should get into finance. That is certainly a good ol boys club.
  - robjan 5y ago
    There's no desire to commodities finance work, but there is for tech
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Getting into tech and getting a great-paying job is achievable and realistic for anyone from any background, right now. It's completely unregulated, there's no gatekeeping outside of factual knowledge, and people are actively encouraging diverse applicants with non-traditional educational backgrounds. Even if the experience for these people is not always as good as it could be, the community is trying. Getting into finance is not even remotely like this. It's a brutal old-boys' club. That's why they recommend the former. You'd have to be insane to recommend that most people try to break into finance.
    - Iefthandrule 5y ago
      The point being made is that finance is far more exclusionary and racist/sexist than tech, but tech gets all the articles written about it. The onus would be on those with power to change hiring in finance, much like the big tech companies are tasked with making tech more inclusive.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
closeparen 5y ago
People say "everyone should learn to code" because that's where the money is. It's well understood that becoming a journalist is a cause of, not a solution to, financial woes.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
>My conclusion is that there is no desire to increase participation in or accessibility to the field of journalism, because of a rejection of the Jevons paradox. And consequently, the shrinking field seems to rely heavily on credentialism and connections to choose who becomes a journalist. As someone who has done both (and moved from journalism to engineering 4.5 years ago), I agree with the first half of your comment, but I disagree with this conclusion. I do agree with you that we should encourage everyone to be a citizen journalist or copy editor, and to a certain extent, social media has done that -- much to the chagrin of many members of the public who then decry the state of the news media. There was a massive push by many of the leading journalism think tanks (Poynter, Niemen, CJR, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, etc.) more than a decade ago for citizen journalism and the rise of user-generated content directly led to news organizations like The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, which in turn informed news and news techniques from the likes of the Times, the Washington Post, etc. And despite media being an utter and complete shithole, more people than ever want to be journalists. But that's not the whole story. The problem, and the reason this isn't a rejection of Jevon's paradox, is that even though the appetite and potential audience for news has increased, the business models around news have collapsed. Larger outlets have managed to sustain, and in some cases like the New York Times, pivot themselves into even larger and more powerful centers -- but thousands more have gone out of business. There have been so many layoffs in the last few years (and at digital outlets too - not just antiquated local papers), it's beyond depressing. There were 16,000 layoffs in newsrooms (print, digital, broadcast) in 2020 [1], and even with the gains in digital organizations, there are still 30,000 fewer working journalists in the US today than in 2008 [2] I don't blame tech for the death of the newspaper, for what it's worth, (although Craigslist and the expectation of everything online being free didn't help), the print industry did a lot of it to themselves. But even digital-first publications suffer to make a profit and become a business, and because the returns on a media investment are not ever going to be the 20x or 30x you get from a tech startup, the appetite for investors has wained and even well-funded outlets can go under or get sold for next to nothing. So you have a flooded labor market and not enough jobs. And those jobs? Don't pay well. Which means that like a lot of other humanities, those jobs are largely taken by the people that can afford to do it, and there goes your diversity numbers. And in New York, DC, or San Francisco/LA (where US news bureaus are largely located), cost of living is insanely high. So you have kids who paid $180,000 for a graduate degree in journalism making $45,000* a year to work in New York City, where they have to live in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn with three other roommates. Or, they come from money and have parents who bought them an apartment. From a monetary perspective, I did very well in journalism, especially for someone who was mid-career and not an executive editor. I make more than double in tech. And in journalism, I was making more than double some of my coworkers (close to 3 times for some of them). To be fair, I work at a FAANG, so I'm an outlier -- and I have some friends/colleagues/mentors who made/make more in journalism than I do in tech -- so at the very top, journalism can be lucrative. But in mid-sized cities, it's abysmal. Part of the reason people encourage "everyone to learn to code," is that for now, the labor demand is larger than the supply and so salaries are high. That probably won't last forever, but it has definitely been the trend for a long time. And another part of the reason is that in general, society dismisses humanities as being less important. And yes, to your point, there probably is also a part of gate-keeping by the elites in those fields to keep it rarified, but I don't think that's the whole story. Joshua Benton wrote a great piece for Nieman Lab (part of Harvard's journalism institution) last month that really encapsulates a lot of the diversity challenge and what changes need to happen to make things better [3], but what he doesn't touch on as much is the fact that once people are skilled to be journalists, the jobs and the pay just aren't there for many people, especially compared to other professions. * Thanks to labor unions, the floor for entry-level newsroom jobs at at least major digital outlets is getting closer to $55k on average, but I still know of big places that hire people in at $45k. And people take those jobs even when they cannot really afford to live on that salary. [1]: https://www.thewrap.com/2020-newsroom-layoffs-data/ https://www.thewrap.com/2020-newsroom-layoffs-data/ [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-fallen-26-since-2008/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroo... [3] https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/its-time-to-create-an-alternative-path-into-a-journalism-career/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/its-time-to-create-an-alte...
wolpoli 5y ago
> I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Indeed, in many aspects, the latter would seem to share many aspects with learning to code (attention to detail, focus on syntax, etc.), and be more accessible. The answer lies in where those "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives come from. Software/Tech workers, unlike many other fields, don't have any prominant organizations that advocate for their rights, set working standards, conduct examinations for certificates, or even just speak for them in public. The void is currently filled by others, such as Tech CEOs and organization in other fields, who have other agendas. One of the agenda is to get more people into the field, reducing barrier of entry so that Tech companies have an easier time hiring. Essentially, software/tech workers don't have a say in our field like the accountants/doctors/pharmacists/lawyers/trades.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Coding is an accessible path to wealth which conceivably could support more. Nursing receives that in pulses and there are tons of organizations and outright unions for them. Nursing has boom and bust cycle Those which fail at scalability and wealth would fall flat before it gets off the drawing board. An initiative to promte being a X would be utterly panned for these for instance. 1. janitor 2. social worker 3. hollywood actor 4. major league athlete 5. CEO
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Isn’t the website you’re commenting on largely an initiative to promote #5?
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      Heh, touché, I probably should have specified CEO of major corporation. Since technically anyone with sufficent money and expertise could become CEO of a useless shell company that does nothing and lacks even a vague plan to develop a business model. (In the US at least.)
deleted 5y ago
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philwelch 5y ago
> Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. The term for this is "classism".
shalmanese 5y ago
> I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Because it's a shrinking industry with excess supply where the compensation and working conditions are terrible? It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nostrademons 5y ago
> "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". In theory, everyone already is a citizen journalist, and everyone should've learned to be a copy editor in the public school system. Much of the impetus for the "everyone should learn to code" effort is by analogy with English class, which is required every year in the public school system, but programming class is usually an exotic elective reserved for upper-middle-class districts. Illiteracy is not socially acceptable in America, but lots of people will say "Oh, I'm just not a math person", and programming is considered a profession rather than a requisite skill. The woes of professional journalists are somewhat related to this. We're surrounded by a glut of potential writers. Because of that, we need heuristics for who we should actually pay attention to. One easy heuristic for that is pedigree: who do you know, what family were you born into, which college did you go to?

whimsicalism 5y ago

This hits the nail on the head. All of my friends who are in the process of becoming journalists have to spend tons of time working unpaid shitty internships just to get a low paying bottom rung job. The only people I know who are even able to get jobs like this either have parents in the industry or have rich parents, often both. This is also true for the humanities in academia writ large - most of the people I know getting a PhD in the humanities have rich parents.

dahfizz 5y ago
The cause is pretty obvious: journalists and other humanities do not pay well. People are not willing to pay for the garbage modern journalists put out, so there is not much money in the field. The only people going into the field, therefore, are those who are independently rich (rich parents) and ideologically motivated (which further reduces the quality of modern journalism).
- goatlover 5y ago
  Sounds like a problem with politicians as well, particularly beyond the local level.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Journalism and the humanities can pay extremely well for insiders. The humanities - especially law and some corners of academia - also have far more direct political leverage than tech does.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    As a (former) lawyer, I wouldn’t clump together law and humanities for this purpose. Many law students and lawyers didn’t major in humanities subjects, and the earning power of lawyers is far greater than academics in the humanities.

not2b 5y ago

Also, for many of the prestigious publications, the way into the door is often via unpaid internships, and interns who do really well eventually get paying jobs. Only those whose families can support them well into their 20s can afford to do that.

throwaway2077 5y ago

you got outdated info. "learn to code" gets people unpersoned on twitter now

dayvid 5y ago

People hate on tech interviews, but it's honestly a lot more fair than traditional interviewing if done properly. You only gauge the candidate on their ability to solve and think through a problem. I also follow a trainer's pattern who doesn't read the candidate's resume before a technical screen to further reduce bias.

whimsicalism 5y ago
In the actual tech world, my view is that these critics are a loud minority who forget what the alternatives look like. As an awkward autistic guy who often gets mistaken for hispanic, the tech interviews are a god-send.
- thenanyu 5y ago
  There are better signals you could get of job success but they require a greater up front investment; I’ve had a good track record with a slightly lower bar on the technical screen and a 30 day probationary period. Some friends of mine user a 2 week work trial for all candidates.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I can't imagine a high-quality candidate agreeing to either of those things in the current market. I certainly wouldn't. But software engineering is very bimodal, so I'm sure it works.
    - thenanyu 5y ago
      The conditions certainly have to be right but it works for high quality candidates if your reputation is good and you engender enough trust. High quality candidates are generally confident in their abilities and thankful that they can take 2 weeks to show you their skills instead of doing it in a high pressure setting in a couple of hours.
      - 5y ago

rayiner 5y ago

> Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. This is one of my concerns about the recent antipathy toward standardized testing. My family came over from Bangladesh, at a time when there were less than 10,000 Bangladeshis in the U.S. Didn't have much cultural knowledge, didn't know anybody important, and it didn't matter. Did well on the SATs, did well on the LSATs--in either engineering or law, being a foreigner didn't hold me back. Not sure what would've happened if those objective measures hadn't existed. (I mean I guess I do know what happened--family connections mattered a lot more in e.g. the legal field back in the day.)

skulk 5y ago
What do you think about the system on the subcontinent? I'm not sure how it's done in Bangladesh, but in India your higher education is basically decided by your score on a few objective measures which are orders of magnitude more difficult than the SAT. It's actually mind-boggling how much harder IIT JEE math is compared to SAT math.
- zeusk 5y ago
  The physics and chemistry aren't any easier. I'd say at-least Physics had the largest delta compared to SAT subject tests or even APs. While the SAT was asking about basic kinetic motion in classical mechanics, JEE was asking about wave-particle duality and calculating uncertainty in motion of photon-electron collisions iirc.
- thenanyu 5y ago
  Chinese Gao Kao tests are similarly much harder than American tests; but at the end of the day I don’t think absolute difficulty matters too much as it’s a comparative test. As long as there is differentiation it does it’s job. If the test taking population is very large the tests might need to be more difficult to make finer distinction

Zababa 5y ago

gorwell 5y ago
It's also a large amount of psychological projection and intra elite jockeying. Naval hit the nail on the head here: `The whole Social Justice Warrior-ing trend seems like a case of white-on-white violence.` https://twitter.com/naval/status/1132170896817266688 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1132170896817266688

kodah 5y ago

This may be an unpopular opinion: > Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. Is tech really that different? * When evaluating senior candidates one of the criteria that candidates are selected on is the prestige of their previous companies, which usually hire from prestigious universities. * Much of what we look at is how many talks a senior candidate has done, their name recognition (aka brand), etc... all indicators of prestige, but not necessarily talent. * When evaluating junior candidates with a lack of job experience the candidate pool is often selected on collegiate prestige. * Hiring is often done by algorithm interviews which, if you went to a prestigious school, are what they spend more time teaching. I've been programming my whole life, but I'm a drop out and spent a chunk of my formative years in the military. The only way I got into being a full time SWE was working as a SRE-SE first. I would've never gotten one of these kush internships had I not spent years putting out other peoples software fires first.

teebs 5y ago
I agree with you that it's definitely about who you know - if you go to Stanford, you can get better jobs out of college compared to someone with similar skills who didn't. But I worked at a FAANG (or whatever it's called now) company and many of the senior engineers we hired were from small/less prestigious companies. These were people with ~10 years of experience who had become great software engineers but had never considered themselves in a class to work in big tech. Then, when given a chance, they got an offer and often accepted it because it paid so much better than their old job. If there weren't such high demand for software engineers, the company would just have hired from other big tech companies since it's safer, but they were forced to try to find people in unexpected places. On the other hand, these people were still negatively impacted by their backgrounds: they hadn't had the chance to join fancy tech companies out of college, which meant they missed out on several years of career opportunities. They were more likely to be hired at a Senior Software Engineer level, for example, when someone similar from a big tech company might be hired at Staff+.
- kodah 5y ago

dogleash 5y ago

>I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist" A few years ago when some journos got laid off, people on twitter meme-ed that they should learn to code. Not only did the journos make it extremely apparent just how far beneath them they think software development is, they also went out of their way to attack the people ribbing them. (With their standard tools: guilt by association to 4chan who got in on the ribbing, and getting twitter to categorize criticism in the wrong direction as abuse.) https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code It's not the reason, but analyzing this sort of thing is a start.

ASinclair 5y ago

Iefthandrule 5y ago
You don't see narratives about how everyone should get into finance. That is certainly a good ol boys club.
- robjan 5y ago
  There's no desire to commodities finance work, but there is for tech
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Getting into tech and getting a great-paying job is achievable and realistic for anyone from any background, right now. It's completely unregulated, there's no gatekeeping outside of factual knowledge, and people are actively encouraging diverse applicants with non-traditional educational backgrounds. Even if the experience for these people is not always as good as it could be, the community is trying. Getting into finance is not even remotely like this. It's a brutal old-boys' club. That's why they recommend the former. You'd have to be insane to recommend that most people try to break into finance.
  - Iefthandrule 5y ago
    The point being made is that finance is far more exclusionary and racist/sexist than tech, but tech gets all the articles written about it. The onus would be on those with power to change hiring in finance, much like the big tech companies are tasked with making tech more inclusive.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago

closeparen 5y ago

People say "everyone should learn to code" because that's where the money is. It's well understood that becoming a journalist is a cause of, not a solution to, financial woes.

filmgirlcw 5y ago

>My conclusion is that there is no desire to increase participation in or accessibility to the field of journalism, because of a rejection of the Jevons paradox. And consequently, the shrinking field seems to rely heavily on credentialism and connections to choose who becomes a journalist. As someone who has done both (and moved from journalism to engineering 4.5 years ago), I agree with the first half of your comment, but I disagree with this conclusion. I do agree with you that we should encourage everyone to be a citizen journalist or copy editor, and to a certain extent, social media has done that -- much to the chagrin of many members of the public who then decry the state of the news media. There was a massive push by many of the leading journalism think tanks (Poynter, Niemen, CJR, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, etc.) more than a decade ago for citizen journalism and the rise of user-generated content directly led to news organizations like The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, which in turn informed news and news techniques from the likes of the Times, the Washington Post, etc. And despite media being an utter and complete shithole, more people than ever want to be journalists. But that's not the whole story. The problem, and the reason this isn't a rejection of Jevon's paradox, is that even though the appetite and potential audience for news has increased, the business models around news have collapsed. Larger outlets have managed to sustain, and in some cases like the New York Times, pivot themselves into even larger and more powerful centers -- but thousands more have gone out of business. There have been so many layoffs in the last few years (and at digital outlets too - not just antiquated local papers), it's beyond depressing. There were 16,000 layoffs in newsrooms (print, digital, broadcast) in 2020 [1], and even with the gains in digital organizations, there are still 30,000 fewer working journalists in the US today than in 2008 [2] I don't blame tech for the death of the newspaper, for what it's worth, (although Craigslist and the expectation of everything online being free didn't help), the print industry did a lot of it to themselves. But even digital-first publications suffer to make a profit and become a business, and because the returns on a media investment are not ever going to be the 20x or 30x you get from a tech startup, the appetite for investors has wained and even well-funded outlets can go under or get sold for next to nothing. So you have a flooded labor market and not enough jobs. And those jobs? Don't pay well. Which means that like a lot of other humanities, those jobs are largely taken by the people that can afford to do it, and there goes your diversity numbers. And in New York, DC, or San Francisco/LA (where US news bureaus are largely located), cost of living is insanely high. So you have kids who paid $180,000 for a graduate degree in journalism making $45,000* a year to work in New York City, where they have to live in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn with three other roommates. Or, they come from money and have parents who bought them an apartment. From a monetary perspective, I did very well in journalism, especially for someone who was mid-career and not an executive editor. I make more than double in tech. And in journalism, I was making more than double some of my coworkers (close to 3 times for some of them). To be fair, I work at a FAANG, so I'm an outlier -- and I have some friends/colleagues/mentors who made/make more in journalism than I do in tech -- so at the very top, journalism can be lucrative. But in mid-sized cities, it's abysmal. Part of the reason people encourage "everyone to learn to code," is that for now, the labor demand is larger than the supply and so salaries are high. That probably won't last forever, but it has definitely been the trend for a long time. And another part of the reason is that in general, society dismisses humanities as being less important. And yes, to your point, there probably is also a part of gate-keeping by the elites in those fields to keep it rarified, but I don't think that's the whole story. Joshua Benton wrote a great piece for Nieman Lab (part of Harvard's journalism institution) last month that really encapsulates a lot of the diversity challenge and what changes need to happen to make things better [3], but what he doesn't touch on as much is the fact that once people are skilled to be journalists, the jobs and the pay just aren't there for many people, especially compared to other professions. * Thanks to labor unions, the floor for entry-level newsroom jobs at at least major digital outlets is getting closer to $55k on average, but I still know of big places that hire people in at $45k. And people take those jobs even when they cannot really afford to live on that salary. [1]: https://www.thewrap.com/2020-newsroom-layoffs-data/ https://www.thewrap.com/2020-newsroom-layoffs-data/ [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-fallen-26-since-2008/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroo... [3] https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/its-time-to-create-an-alternative-path-into-a-journalism-career/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/its-time-to-create-an-alte...

wolpoli 5y ago

> I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Indeed, in many aspects, the latter would seem to share many aspects with learning to code (attention to detail, focus on syntax, etc.), and be more accessible. The answer lies in where those "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives come from. Software/Tech workers, unlike many other fields, don't have any prominant organizations that advocate for their rights, set working standards, conduct examinations for certificates, or even just speak for them in public. The void is currently filled by others, such as Tech CEOs and organization in other fields, who have other agendas. One of the agenda is to get more people into the field, reducing barrier of entry so that Tech companies have an easier time hiring. Essentially, software/tech workers don't have a say in our field like the accountants/doctors/pharmacists/lawyers/trades.

Nasrudith 5y ago
Coding is an accessible path to wealth which conceivably could support more. Nursing receives that in pulses and there are tons of organizations and outright unions for them. Nursing has boom and bust cycle Those which fail at scalability and wealth would fall flat before it gets off the drawing board. An initiative to promte being a X would be utterly panned for these for instance. 1. janitor 2. social worker 3. hollywood actor 4. major league athlete 5. CEO
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Isn’t the website you’re commenting on largely an initiative to promote #5?
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    Heh, touché, I probably should have specified CEO of major corporation. Since technically anyone with sufficent money and expertise could become CEO of a useless shell company that does nothing and lacks even a vague plan to develop a business model. (In the US at least.)

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philwelch 5y ago

shalmanese 5y ago

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nostrademons 5y ago

> "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". In theory, everyone already is a citizen journalist, and everyone should've learned to be a copy editor in the public school system. Much of the impetus for the "everyone should learn to code" effort is by analogy with English class, which is required every year in the public school system, but programming class is usually an exotic elective reserved for upper-middle-class districts. Illiteracy is not socially acceptable in America, but lots of people will say "Oh, I'm just not a math person", and programming is considered a profession rather than a requisite skill. The woes of professional journalists are somewhat related to this. We're surrounded by a glut of potential writers. Because of that, we need heuristics for who we should actually pay attention to. One easy heuristic for that is pedigree: who do you know, what family were you born into, which college did you go to?