![]() For example, I started at the paper making at least a few thousand dollars more in annual salary than reporters who had been there for years without a substantive raise. We also discovered some alarming pay disparities amongst ourselves at that first book club meeting (side note: talk to your coworkers about what you make! It’s not taboo!). Yet there were many times in which we were surprised by editorial decisions that ended up in the published versions of our work - and the few times which we’d later raise concerns, they were mostly rebuffed. We realized that as reporters we felt a distinct lack of ability to advocate for our own work or the sources who oftentimes risked a lot to talk to us and tell their stories. The combination of Just Mercy and the nationwide unrest we were all watching unfold in real time led our book club into discussing our workplace and how the newspaper of a supposedly-liberal bastion of Kansas covered racism, People of Color, and a myriad other topics that media across the country were introspectively examining at the time (or at least should have been). This was around the time that America was appropriately jolted with nationwide protests and calls for structural changes to policing after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (and the countless other Black folks that came before them). Then, my coworkers and I started a book club and had our first meeting over the summer (we read and discussed Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, which I promise is relevant to this piece). And for the first few months, everything about the job functioned as well as one could ask for. ![]() I joined the Lawrence Journal-World in February 2020, just before the pandemic changed everything. Even after everything that happened following those first seven months, I would go back in a heartbeat if I knew things would be different - but I’m certain it wouldn’t be. This idealism about the job itself never went away. Even with remarkably busy stretches that included double digit story counts in a 60-hour work week, it was important work that I was happy to do. Working at a solid, mid-size daily newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas covering my alma mater (an always-interesting beat that churns out almost more news than one reporter can cover) and the Kansas Statehouse was something I thought was ideally suited for me.Īnd for seven months, even through the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was. It’s been nearly four months since I left what was the closest thing I thought I could have to a dream job at age 23. The toxic culture of the Lawrence Journal-World
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