Exit interview with NYTimes labor reporter Greenhouse

Hamilton Nolan of Gawker interviewed New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, who is leaving the paper in two weeks after accepted its buyout offer.

Here is an excerpt:

Gawker:With your departure, the number of big papers with full time labor reporters is down to one. How do you see the future of labor reporting? Do you see encouraging stuff elsewhere, or do you think a lot of stories are just going to disappear?

Steven Greenhouse: The NYT has a long and distinguished history of covering issues involving workers and labor unions, and I am confident that the Times will continue to give serious attention to these issues, whether it is stagnating wages or the protests of the Fight for 15 fast-food movement. An example, though not on the labor, the NYT’s investigative reporter, David Barstow, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his coverage of egregious workplace safety violations

Nationwide, the number of full-time reporters who covered labor fell sharply over the past 7 to 10 years as newspapers downsized. But labor coverage – by full-time and part-time reporters – has rebounded recently, at least somewhat, in response to the battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio, the right-to-work fight in Michigan in response to the rise of the fast-food workers’ movement as well as growing concerns about income inequality and declining living standards for the nation’s middle class.

Read more here.