No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class

by Christopher R. Martin

Overview

Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of American society in favor of the moneyed "upscale" consumer for more than four decades. Christopher R. Martin now reveals why and how the media lost sight of the American working class and the effects of it doing so.

The damning indictment of the mainstream media that flows through No Longer Newsworthy is a wakeup call about the critical role of the media in telling news stories about labor unions, workers, and working-class readers. As Martin charts the decline of labor reporting from the late 1960s onwards, he reveals the shift in news coverage as the mainstream media abandoned labor in favor of consumer and business interests. When newspapers, especially, wrote off working-class readers as useless for their business model, the American worker became invisible. In No Longer Newsworthy, Martin covers this shift in focus, the loss of political voice for the working class, and the emergence of a more conservative media in the form of Christian television, talk radio, Fox News, and conservative websites.

Now, with our fractured society and news media, Martin offers the mainstream media recommendations for how to push back against right-wing media and once again embrace the working class as critical to its audience and its democratic function.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501735257
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2019
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christopher R. Martin is Professor of Digital Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the award-winning author of Framed! Follow him on X @chrismartin100

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Trump, Carrier, and the Invisible Worker
2. The Rise and Fall of Labor Reporting
3. The News Media's Shift to Upscale Audiences
4. The Changing News Narrative about Workers
5. Workers and Political Voice
6. "Job Killers" in the News
7. Rethinking News about US Workers
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Jack Metzgar

I read Christopher R. Martin's No Longer Newsworthy with great pleasure. This book is absolutely fresh and original, and insightful. Martin writes with a mildly smart-ass edge that adds to the attention-grabbing nature of his work.

Philip Dine

No Longer Newsworthy is an important book on what is arguably the biggest single challenge facing the labor movement and American workers: their near-invisibility in the media and hence in public discussion.

Micah Uetricht

For US workers, journalism is broken. While coverage of working-class issues has become 'misunderstood and mostly invisible' in today's media, working-class anger has been growing, opening up the door for far-right news outlets and a right-wing populist president to pose as workers' only true defenders. No one has better laid out what has gone wrong with American journalistic coverage of the working class and how it helped lead to our current, disastrous political moment than Christopher R. Martin.

Robert McChesney

No Longer Newsworthy is a must-read for anyone concerned with the state of America in the age of Trump. Christopher R. Martin brilliantly demonstrates the flawed presentation and analysis of working-class life and concerns in the mainstream media, and the problems this foments in politics. This is a fabulous book, ideal for undergrads and the general public.

Eric Alterman

Christopher R. Martin has produced an important and powerfully argued intervention into a media conversation that has for too-long ignored the actual existing conditions of working people in the United States.

Editorial Reviews

A major accomplishment...Martin's powerful prescriptive story is very much part of the policy agenda for the broad community of labor scholars and activists.

ILR Review

No Longer Newsworthy is an engaging read that makes a convincing case for how and why the working class was neglected by the news media. The use of historical sources and content analysis data clearly strengthen this argument.

Communication Booknotes Quarterly

"A detailed argument about how the demise of labor reporting speaks to something systemically troubling with U.S. journalism, a disconnect between the newsroom and the working classthis book should be read by beat reporters and editors around the country as a cautionary tale of past media failures and an inspiration to do better with the next story.

Journalism History

Even though Martin has written a history of newspaper journalism from a union perspective, his honesty as a commentator, great skills as a researcher, and deep, careful argumentation make this book worthy of considerable attention.

H-Net

Well-researched and equally well-written...Martin registers a major scholarly insight...Based on two deep content analyses of national outlets, he deftly identifies the early inclusion of labor in the news and its subsequent exclusion to demonstratethe long, downward trend he wants the reader to see.

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly - Frank Durham

Insightful.... At once an important work of Trump-era criticism and an urgently needed condemnation of a media culture that persistently erases and misrepresents the lives and concerns of America's diverse working-class majority.

Jacobin

This book about journalism is also an example of what journalism should be.

Choice

"Well-researched and equally well-written...Martin registers a major scholarly insight."

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

"No Longer Newsworthyis a must-read for anyone concerned with the state of America in the age of Trump. Christopher R. Martin brilliantly demonstrates the flawed presentation and analysis of working-class life and concerns in the mainstream media, and the problems this foments in politics. This is a fabulous book, ideal for undergrads and the general public."

Robert McChesney

"For US workers, journalism is broken. While coverage of working-class issues has become 'misunderstood and mostly invisible' in today's media, working-class anger has been growing, opening up the door for far-right news outlets and a right-wing populist president to pose as workers' only true defenders. No one has better laid out what has gone wrong with American journalistic coverage of the working class and how it helped lead to our current, disastrous political moment than Christopher R. Martin."

Micah Uetricht

"No Longer Newsworthy is animportant book onwhat is arguablythebiggest single challenge facing the labor movement and American workers:their near-invisibility in the media and hence in public discussion."

Philip Dine

"Christopher R. Martin has produced an important and powerfully argued intervention into a media conversation that has for too-long ignored the actual existing conditions of working people in the United States."

Eric Alterman

"I read Christopher R. Martin's No Longer Newsworthy with great pleasure. This book is absolutely fresh and original, and insightful. Martin writes with a mildly smart-ass edge that adds to the attention-grabbing nature of his work."

Jack Metzgar