I'm Jill and this is my blog yo.

Thursday December 29, 2011

Today the New York Times published a front-page story that I think is emblematic of what’s wrong with a lot of NYT reporting. The article was titled “Instead of Work, Younger Women Head to School: Upgrading Their Skills Rather Than Settling for Low Pay” by Catherine Rampell.

The problem with it, as usual, wasn’t that it wasn’t well-researched (it was brimming with statistics), or cogently-written (the author makes a persuasive case that yes, more young women these days are using the economic downturn as an opportunity to go back to school instead of working crappy, low-paying jobs). The problem is that the NYT seems to fundamentally downplay the importance of actually talking to the people they’re reporting on.

The article had solid evidence for what the news was: the economy sucks, good jobs are scarce, statistics are showing that a disproportionate number of young women are dropping out of the labor force.

But it also had a truly staggering, almost insulting, number of expert voices. In total four experts were interviewed, including not one but two economists, a research director at a Chicago think thank, and the president of a community college in North Carolina. And what was the cumulative conclusion of their insights? The shocking revelation that (wait for it….) more young women are enrolling in college. Why we needed four separate experts and a comprehensive info-graphic to confirm the obvious fact that young women departing from the workforce has coincided with young women enrolling in school, is quite frankly beyond me. But thank you NYT for being so thorough. 

If only if they could have been equally thorough in their coverage of real live women who are actually affected by this change. In contrast to the experts consulted, only one woman undergoing this transition (a Master’s candidate named Lauren Baker, who recently quit her job at Starbucks to go back to school) was actually interviewed for the article.

As a reader, I found this a little offensive. I understand the importance of experts, and I’m reassured to know that the New York Times has such knowledgeable sources at their disposal, I really am. But if the decisions of young women are only discussed and conjectured about at length by outside experts, while the women themselves are not being given their own voices, this is, in the words of Kate Zambreno, “a huge fucking problem”, (especially given that the subject matter of this article so obviously intertwined with complex feminist issues).

For shame, NYT.

  1. drunkandopinionated posted this