Why are we writing stories about lower Wall Street pay?

Yvette Kantrow, the executive editor of The Deal, wonders why business journalism is falling all over itself, particularly a Bloomberg News story, to cover how Wall Streeters are seeing a decline in pay and bonuses.

Kantrow writes, “First of all, the Bloomberg story hardly qualifies as investigative journalism and offers little in the way of news; that rich people, however you define that term, don’t like making or having less money than they used to — who does? — is hardly a startling or even useful insight. Then there’s the hypocrisy of making fun of the story’s participants for trying to save money by clipping coupons and reading supermarket circulars. After all, hasn’t the personal finance press — aka the latte police — been offering such absurd advice for years?

“No matter. The general consensus is that the people in the Bloomberg piece should just shut up so we can all better focus on those with real money problems. CJR’s Audit, for one, offers up The Huffington Post’s first entry in a planned yearlong series on the lives of America’s middle class and poor as an antidote for those who didn’t see the ‘ridiculousness’ of the complaints lodged by Abelson’s whiners. Indeed, HuffPost’s story on a 23-year-old named Brooklyn Davis is wrenching. Poor, unemployed and behind on child care payments, Davis hopes to land a minimum-wage cleaning job at a hotel that will cost him $5.50 a day in bus fare. ‘Statistically speaking, Davis, like his parents, faces surprisingly high odds against ever escaping poverty — regardless of what happens in the wider economy,’ the story reports.

“The Audit is correct; Davis’ woes certainly puts the lack of a dishwasher in perspective. But while the media has made Schiff something of a household name, it has done relatively little to publicize Davis and his plight. The HuffPost story has not been widely cited or linked to by others, and its author, Tom Zeller Jr., has yet to be celebrated à la Abelson. Maybe that will come. The truth is, for an eyeball-hungry media, it’s a lot more fruitful to make fun of the rich than to dig into the real and pressing problems of the poor. Schadenfreude beats empathy every day.”

Read more here.