How to Improve Coverage of Working-Class Women

American newsrooms are overwhelmingly white. People of color—a very broad subgroup—make up just over 22.6 percent of active journalists employed by United States newsrooms. Women make up about one-third (33 percent) of that population, meaning over 66 percent of American journalists are white men. As such, news media often disproportionately covers white and male stories.

Moreover, most people employed by newsrooms are members of the “middle class,” defined as the working group of people who have obtained some form of college degree (Associates, Bachelors, or Masters), versus the “working class,” who have not. This gap is both caused by and causes inequitable access to money, jobs, and education. The working class also contains more people of color due to people of color’s disproportionate financial inequality in the United States. This is an important demographic that needs attention, because all too often they are ignored in other major ways.

So how do we get more working class women represented? Here are some tips.

BEGIN YOUR REPORTING IN SERVICE OF THE WORKERS

One of the greater traps of reporting on this demographic is to view their inequality as a prison. While it certainly makes things harder, your job should be to coordinate information with the community to help these working-class women find new and creative solutions to work with in order to improve their own lives. Share the demands of the workers, share what they’re specifically saying the problems are and what they are calling for to improve their—and their community’s—lives. 

MAKE SURE YOU TAKE CARE OF YOUR SOURCES THROUGHOUT—AND AFTER—YOUR PROCESS

Your sources have a right to know what to expect of you, how the information they’ve shared will be used in your writing, and what steps you plan to take with that information. Your sources also have a duty to their community—and want to know that the people they are interacting with share that sense of responsibility. Look for ways to give your source some form of editorial control, and continue to involve yourself with the community even after the story is done by giving back in some capacity. When dealing with mostly marginalized groups, it’s important their unedited voices get a piece of the spotlight, too.

EXPERTS DON’T NEED TO BE CERTIFIED

Working class people may seem a dearth of expertise because of A lack of material accreditations—such as published works, degrees, and awards—but experience turns one into an expert regardless of circumstance. Your local bodega guy who founded that bodega 20 years ago is an expert on running that bodega. Even if a university can’t award him that accreditation, lived experience is valuable expertise. That person will likely have a clear idea of what they think the problems plaguing their community are, as well as solutions they’d like to see implemented. That data is important to give voice to and share throughout the community.

FOREGROUND LIVED EXPERIENCE AGAINST SOCIETY

Here’s where society comes into play—instead of a general wash of data regarding inequality, a simple story from a real human being foregrounded against the why that story happened is the most effective tool a journalist can work with. Once your sources have a real voice and are humanized, the greater implications of society’s failure of these people become all too clear. 

Like most journalism, specificity is important when working with working-class women because it is so easy to generalize them into a demographic; but the single concerns of one human are often a direct match of the concerns of the community at large. Giving these underheard women a chance to call for the change they’d like to see in their communities, supported by your thoughtful and specific journalistic process, has the power to implement actual change.