Read on Twitter
As a Black male journalist, I know all too well why there are not too many people who look like me in the media industry (Thread below).
Looking at some of the steps journalists normally take to break into the journalism world, those who are from a low-income family face many barriers — meaning most of the young journalists who’ve made it in the industry had some sort of financial privilege.
For instance, internships are key to landing a job after college. First, some of these internships are unpaid, and you need a car to get to places. (I didn’t have a car when I interned at the Gainesville Sun my junior year and part of my senior year.
Also, an entry level journalism job pays about $30,000 a year. That means as a 20-something-year-old journalist, you need supplemental income. Not everyone can live off $30,000 a year, specifically if you have student loans. So, mom and dad definitely need to help out.
But that may not be feasible for some parents if they’re not wealthy enough to help their child after college.
Journalists usually get jobs in small towns to gain experience and then eventually move up the ladder to a bigger market, but that’s also challenging because small towns may not be very welcoming to people of color.
Some people may argue that it would make sense for young reporters to work in small towns for many reasons, including being able to live on a small salary because the cost of living there is low.
But living in a small town can be challenging for people of color. In my experience, some small towns may not be very welcoming to Black people because of a lack of space to congregate.
For instance, I went out to a nightclub to celebrate my 26 birthday when I lived in Arkansas. A man called me the N***word on my way back home.
One of my sources — who I had to interview for multiple stories given his or her role in the school system — called me a racial slur because he or she was not satisfied with an editorial decision.
I had to look at the source in the face every time during our interview and think that the source thought less of me. Even though I studied journalism on a full ride from a top-notch Florida school, The University of Florida, that was not enough. And it hurt.
There have been many instances where I’ve felt like I had been discriminated against — not only as a Black reporter, but as a foreign Black man, including when an upset reader wrote several emails lamenting about my poor writing skills and that I should head back to ‘Africa.’
I hope one day that people like me — a Black foreigner whose intentions have only been to live the American dream by working two part-time jobs as a lower-classman, writing for the student-run newspaper, among other activities — won’t have to face these obstacles.
