The media’s lack of labor reporting

Timothy Noah writes for Politico Magazine about why the media ignores labor coverage.

Noah writes, “Labor coverage’s decline—like that of labor unions—long predates print journalism’s circulation slide. At Newsweek, for instance, as long ago as 1985, covering labor was no more than an entry-level job. Bob Cohn (today president and chief operating officer at the Atlantic, then my fellow grunt at Newsweek) became labor and workplace correspondent at the tender age of 22. Back then, he and I would swap wisecracks about what a backwater the beat had become.

“But by today’s standards, labor and workplace coverage was flooding the zone. “The 10 to 15 biggest newspapers all had labor writers,” Cohn recalls. “The newsmagazines all did.” Now, with Greenhouse’s departure from the Times, the only full-time labor reporter left at any of the big newspapers will be the Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Trottman.

“Will the Times replace Greenhouse? It won’t say. ‘Given that we’re still in the middle of this [buyout] process,’ said Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy in an e-mail, ‘questions like this one are not likely to be settled until early in the new year.’ For his part, Greenhouse says, ‘I’m sure they will name someone to replace Bill Carter as TV reporter’—Carter is also taking a buyout—’and I’m hoping they will name someone to replace me.’

“The logic of mainstream news outlets losing interest in the labor beat over the past 40 years goes something like this. In the middle of the 20^th century labor was a big story because labor unions and working people generally were major players in American life. During the 1960s, even children (I was one) knew the names of prominent labor leaders—George Meany at the AFL-CIO, Walter Reuther at the United Auto Workers, Jimmy Hoffa at the Teamsters. Give yourself a gold star if you can name the three people occupying those jobs today.”