On July 4th, journalist Heather Bryant published an important article on Medium that I think everyone should read and think about. Her story should make all of us uncomfortable, not just about the state of journalism, but also about how each of us thinks about class and the people around us doing under-appreciated, but vital work.
Below are some excerpts from the piece, but it’s worth reading the entire thing.
I was talking to this person whom I’d just met. They told me about their job and where they worked. They asked me about mine. I told them I’d worked in public media in Alaska before moving to the Lower 48. I was a couple of months from wrapping up my time as a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford. They asked about what I worked on and I explained my research around collaboration in journalism and that I intended…