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May 11, 2009, 5:49 p.m.

Social class and the modern journalist

I’m just getting around to reading this piece by Sandra Tsing Loh from The Atlantic’s March issue, and it’s pretty great. Its jumping-off point is Paul Fussell‘s wonderful 1983 book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. (It’s hard for me to recommend Fussell generally and Class specifically highly enough — both brilliant.)

Go read it yourself, and think about it through the lens of journalism. Its basic arguments — that the traditional status anxieties of the middle class are now being visited upon the so-called “creative class” — are interesting in the context of once-comfortable journalists suddenly seeing their paychecks challenged (by collapsing business models) along with their position in society (by bloggers and the like).

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).
POSTED     May 11, 2009, 5:49 p.m.
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