Finding a lot of good stories about workers

Steven Greenhouse is the New York Times’ labor correspondent and Wesleyan University’s Koeppel Journalism Fellow this fall.

He spoke with Taylor Leet-Otley of the Wesleyan Argus about his career. What follows is an excerpt:

A: How did you find your niche as a reporter?

SG: So at The Times I started as a business correspondent. I was Editor-in-Chief for The Argus, went to The New York Times my first year out of Wesleyan as a copyboy, getting coffee, sorting mail. Then I went to Columbia Journalism School for a year where I specialized in economics writing. I worked in northern New Jersey for three years where I wrote about school boards for a year, then I wrote about economics and labor, then I went to law school where I specialized in Constitutional Law and Labor Law. At The New York Times, I started as a business reporter, and I was in Chicago for three years as a business-economic correspondent. I was in Paris for five years as an economics correspondent, and then I was in Washington for four years covering the first two years covering the Federal Reserve, and then covering the State Department. I wanted to write about people again. And the labor beat was open.

A lot of people say it’s a boring beat. I thought, there are 150 million workers and there are a lot of interesting stories about workers. It’s not just about labor unions. It’s about struggling farm workers, and struggling immigrant workers, and sex/race/religion discrimination at work, how workers are getting treated on the job, and public safety problems at work, and some companies that do a great job in how they treat their workers, like Costco. I’ve been doing this beat a long time and I haven’t gotten bored with it. I find a lot of good stories.

Read more here.