WSJ newsroom pressing paper for changes

Joe Pompeo of Vanity Fair examines the rising activism within the Wall Street Journal newsroom, where reporters are pushing the paper’s management for changes regarding diversity and the editorial page.

Pompeo reports, “These are the very types of issues that, with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, have been thrust to the fore at all of America’s major media organizations. Indeed, each of the Journal’s main counterparts in the American newspaper industry—the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times—has recently been experiencing its own reckoning along these lines. The Journal, as an institution, has historically been more buttoned-up and conservative (both in the literal sense and in terms of its red-blooded editorial board), which makes the recent letter-writing campaigns stand out all the more.

“‘It’s nothing like the insurrection at the Times, but by WSJ standards, this is pretty interesting,’ said Grueskin. Likewise, a journalist who still works there told me, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ I asked this person if it feels like a sea change. ‘No question.’

“As with other newsrooms, the discussion and organizing around these issues has been happening on Slack, the workplace messaging platform about which Digiday last week declared, ‘Slack is fueling media’s bottom-up revolution.’ Journal staffers recently created a private, noncompany Slack channel that people have been invited to join via their personal email addresses. ‘There’s some prominent reporters in there,’ I was told.”

Read more here.