On Thursday, Julia Carrie Wong wrote a piece for The Nation titled “A Very Serious Problem With Very Serious Journalism.” That problem? There aren’t enough women covering issues such as economics and foreign policy.
Women might have already reached parity in covering style, food and gender issues. People of color might gain prominence writing about race or immigration. Those topics are important, but we need their perspectives on foreign policy, national security and other very serious, very white male topics as well. After all, the brunt of surveillance, war and economic injustice is borne not by the most privileged, but by communities of color, migrants, women, the working class and the poor. A journalism more aware of the intersections of race, class and power will be much better equipped to ask the questions that might not even occur to reporters who have never interacted with the state from a position of weakness—whether that’s as a person of color subject to intense police repression or a woman whose access to reproductive health care is increasingly under attack.
