New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley, who is about to begin a new beat assignment covering the wealthy, writes about how her stories will fit into the newspaper’s income inequality coverage.
Stanley writes, “I covered post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s and watched as Kremlin-friendly businessmen became billionaires by carving up state assets in the process known as privatization. Here money is flowing in the opposite direction: Self-made tech, real estate and hedge fund tycoons are privatizing the public sector by supplementing, and in some cases supplanting, school boards, museum trustees, campaign donors and even government grants for scientific research.
“The intent here isn’t to chronicle the lifestyles of the rich and famous – that always entertaining topic is already widely covered. Billionaires create their own ecospheres for good as well as ill, but they aren’t really answerable to anyone except themselves. This election cycle seems like a particularly a good moment to take a more anthropological look at the rituals, costs and contradictions of this new Gilded Age.
“So for me it’s like embarking on a new overseas assignment. The business pages are a road map, and while I don’t speak the language of wealth fluently and don’t expect to assimilate very deeply into the culture (The Times will not pay for Uber helicopter rides or lunch at Marea), everything about the territory seems mysterious and fascinating.”
Read more here.
