Is this the beginning of an attempt at writing revisionist history about journalists in the past couple decades? First you have the whole thing about how journalists deserve to be paid less, and now, you see traces of that same “you had it too good; now it’s back to reality” mentality in this commencement speech by Barbara Ehrenreich to journalism graduates at UC Berkeley. I’ve annotated the article with some of my reactions. Basically, the speech says professional journalists have strayed from their working class roots and seen themselves as part of the elite since the 90s and therefore got a false sense of entitlement that’s now being burst.

As someone who actually started working in journalism in the late 90s and worked in biz until 2006, I can say that whatever “fat times” the industry was having, it certainly didn’t translate into my being in any “elite” class, and I’m sure there are plenty of journalists who will share similar sentiments. And I sure as heck didn’t feel entitled to a job when I was graduating. In fact, I felt so lucky and ecstatic to have an opportunity come my way a semester before graduation that I was willing to work 32 hours a week on top of classes that last semester just to ensure I would have a job when I got out of school.

It really ticks me off how people can take a few journalists at the very high end of the pay scale or an anecdote about top editors at big magazines having extravagant lunches and turn them into a conclusion that journalists were living the high life in the last couple decades. And it ticks me off even more when that nonsense is spread and legitimized by people who never lived the journalist life or earned the typical journalist salary. Yeah, journalists can hold a romanticized view of their work and attribute more importance to it than it perhaps deserves. But elitist and a sense of entitlement? Give me a break.