Episode 01: No Longer Newsworthy

In this episode, Ryan speaks with Christopher R. Martin, Professor of Communication Studies and Digital Journalism at the University of Northern Iowa. Martin is the author of No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class (Cornell University Press /ILR Press), named one of Choice magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles of 2019. No Longer Newsworthy traces the decline of the “labor beat” in local and national newspapers, as — beginning in the 1960s — these publications became less concerned with serving mass audiences and more concerned with targeting upscale consumers. As Martin shows in vivid detail, this shift in focus has distorted the mainstream media’s coverage of labor issues and prompted many rural and working-class readers to turn to other, more conservative sources of news. The book provides a useful framework for thinking about the decline of the newspaper industry, including here in the Texas Panhandle, and it points to ways that publications can revitalize their labor coverage so as to better fulfill the democratic function of an independent press. For more information and video links for news stories, useful for teaching, visit Martin’s No Longer Newsworthy website. For an application to the labor-journalism workshop described in the interview, visit the CUNY Graduate School for Journalism’s “Reporting the U.S. Workplace” page.