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This is the Future of Journalism podcast, and I'm keeping my associate director of the Writers Institute Fellowship Programme.

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Let's meet our guests from episode Robin Zyl, a news reporter in the north of England and current journalist fellow at the institute.

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Welcome Robin. Hi, thanks for having me. We're tackling a huge elephant in British newsrooms today, the underrepresentation of working class people.

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We'll share some facts and figures, some real life stories, and we'll look at whether there are any concrete steps you could take to make your

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organisation a more welcoming environment for working class journalists and contributors.

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This is not a problem to tackle instead of diversity and inclusion.

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This is part and parcel of the diversity and inclusion problem,

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and if you have any lingering doubts about why this matters, it's because representation is not just a moral imperative.

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A 2018 report by Deloitte suggests that organisations with inclusive cultures are six times more innovative and agile,

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eight times as likely to achieve better business results and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial

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targets than organisations with less diversity in the workplace and the bonus journalism benefits,

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you get better access to the communities you're tasked with reporting on.

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The Diversity in Journalism report based on twenty twenty one labour force survey data and published by the National Council

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for the Training of Journalists found that 80 percent of people working in British newsrooms come from the top social classes.

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That figure was up from seventy five percent in 2020. How does that compare to the population?

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Only 42 percent of all UK workers had a parent and one of the three highest occupational groups, which is one of the key determinants of social class.

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Only two percent of journalists have a parent and the lowest two occupational groups, compared to 20 percent of all workers.

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And only five percent of journalists have parents in the skilled trades occupations, compared to twenty one percent.

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So there is a real representation problem. But what you don't get from the numbers is the human impact,

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and that's why we've invited Robyn to have a conversation about what those numbers translate to in real life.

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You started a WhatsApp group for working class journalists. Can you tell me when you started it and why?

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I think I might have started it maybe four years ago, which seems like a long time, but I think that's probably about accurate.

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I think something might have set me off that day. I can't remember what it was. It was maybe a column in a newspaper or something.

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So I messaged all the working class genocide now, and I also pasted on Twitter just asking, you know, because that's the other thing as well.

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It's all right for me to add the working class people that I know.

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But you know, when you don't have any kind of networks like, you know,

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networks from school or university, sometimes you end up kind of excluded from this kind of thing.

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So I posted on Twitter and had a few responses and added people I didn't know to it, and we've become like fairly good friends.

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Sometimes we'll send it to the links to things that have been written and we go, Oh my God, have you seen this?

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And sometimes we do a long voice note where we blow off steam about something that's happened in the office.

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We're not happy about. So, yeah, so it's it's quite a good forum for support and discussion really in preparation for this podcast.

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You asked some of them if they'd be willing anonymously to share some examples of

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why British newsrooms sometimes do not feel inclusive of working class people.

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Would you mind sharing some of those?

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Yes, so I actually we talked for for a few hours about about this on aside asking and, you know, I started off with an example.

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Sometimes you might get sent to do a food bank story that might be because you're a very good journalist and you're very good with people.

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Or it might be because somehow you seem to fit in a food bank environment in a way that a posh journalist doesn't.

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And then the other end of the scale as well, you know that my job might come up.

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You know this interviewing the home secretary, for example, and it might seem more appropriate to send a posh person.

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And that starts from kind of intern level, you know, junior reporter level or trainee level sometimes.

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And you can't, you know, you can't prove any of this and you can't necessarily even put your finger on it sometimes.

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But it's just, you know, like a lot of elements of kind of discrimination.

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It's one of the is is very difficult to really be able to concretely say, you know,

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this is this is classism, but you know, my friends kind of responded with their own stories.

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One of them said, he he he's written a book and he gets comments from middle class people.

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Middle class colleagues, you know, surprised that he's written a book, for example.

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And he said that one, one very middle class co-worker said,

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You wrote a book in such a way that she was shocked and then proceeded to explain over me to somebody, to someone else exactly what my book was about.

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And again, he wasn't exactly sure that it was classism, but he said, you know,

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she's the kind of person whose eyes glaze over if anything ever comes up, that's related to class.

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One person said that they've been asked to do risky things in the name of journalism because and I quote,

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we came to you because you're from a Scouse family. So I used to getting up to no good with the law, which is really bad.

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And now, interestingly, she works in an international newsroom now and said that she is kind of free of free of that.

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And actually, she's kind of considered the posh one, which is quite nice.

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And that is something that I felt while I've been here, you know, the Voice Institute because everybody else is not from the UK.

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It's just quite a nice break from it and from second guessing yourself.

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And you know, if someone makes a comment, think, you know, I'm not thinking, Oh, that is that, you know, classes comment.

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Was that something they, you know, was that about my background?

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Because it's because it's not because because the class system is not really such an issue in other countries,

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or at least not in the same way as in Britain. Yeah. So somebody said that there was a real gap in a newsroom that she went to and there's

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a real gap in knowledge about what ordinary people would know and understand.

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So when writing articles, they'd refer to things and expect the readers to already know, you know, who these people were.

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So it might be like a literary reference or something like that.

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And she felt like she was constantly go mad because she would have to explain that, no, not everybody will have heard of this person.

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But yeah, I think you've said a couple of times now yourself not being sore and feeling like you're going mad.

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And it sounds like there's a lot of psychological pressure within the wheelhouse of what might be called gaslighting,

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because you're just not sure the conversations are being had.

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Yeah, I love is interesting, actually,

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a lot of a lot of working class journalists mentioned to me about having imposter syndrome and feeling like they don't belong.

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And you know that I think that's probably a very natural reaction.

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I had the opposite reaction, really when I when I started working in journalism and especially going into kind of the, you know, national newsrooms.

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And, you know, I've worked for a lot of different national newspapers. I had to guess like reverse imposter syndrome,

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where where it was like I couldn't believe that I had worked so hard for so long and sacrificed so much and

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been so thankful to have finally broke into journalism and an expected looking around in the newsroom.

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Everyone would be incredible and super smart and super honest and super hardworking and amazing people.

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And actually, a lot of the people went like that. All you know, they were never even that enthusiastic.

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Maybe that's why that's how I survived in the industry. Perhaps because I didn't actually feel like I was not meant to be there.

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I had other people are imposters syndrome. I think I know it.

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That's the problem with me.

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Try not to articulate that. It's like, I want to talk about it.

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I don't want to talk about it. OK, if that makes sense, because the real problems with classism and working class, you know,

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the lack of working class people in the media, I wouldn't actually know about them because I'm here.

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And you know, the real stories to be told to the people who aren't able to tell them because they do have a platform,

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because they didn't because they didn't make it. You touched on the problem of the definition of working class people,

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and I wanted to talk a little bit more with you about that because one in five

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persons who earn over a hundred thousand pounds a month when asked to self classify,

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said there were working class. So in other words, people earning in the top six percent of all households are self-identifying as working class.

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How are we ever going to? Measure how many working class people are in a newsroom.

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If people are self-defining in that way?

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To me, it's actually very feasible that the EU could be earning that kind of money and still consider yourself working class,

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especially if all you know, if you still live in the community that you grew up in or you live in a working class community or,

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you know, your family and friends of a working class. I don't actually think that's too.

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That's too much of a crazy. I mean, people do take it, take the time to mean whatever they want it to mean.

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So you get people who, you know, because their granddad worked in a factory.

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They consider themselves working class.

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I think when it comes down to actually measuring it on any real level, self-identifying might not be the best way to go.

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I think, broadly speaking, it is the best approach.

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But there comes a point when you've got to, you know, look at, for example, what your parents did for a living, right?

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So in terms of identifying what working class means so that we can track it because you have

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to have the data before you can define the problem and then start implementing the solutions,

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perhaps one way to do that then, is to say to your staff,

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this is how we're defining it based on, for example,

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whatever the labour force the Labour Force Survey defines as as these key markers like

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the occupation of your parents and then asking people to self-report based on that.

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Yeah, giving a definition and asking people whether they fit the definition makes sense or taking some data about parents occupation or,

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you know, someone's postcode at age 14.

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Or, you know, because actually in this country, we have we have data about levels of deprivation by postcode is quite granular data.

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It's not perfect, but that's the kind of thing that can be quite useful. We wouldn't even need to bother people with.

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Please fill out yet another survey for each other.

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What are the assumptions that are made about you that are incorrect based on things like your accent, your tracksuit?

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What are the biases that need to be addressed?

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So the Social Mobility Foundation has done a lot of work around the concept of polish and often working class people.

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You know, they may not make as much money them, they might not be promoted because they lack polish.

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What's defined as Polish is a middle class way of being.

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And that's the default and anything that deviates from that is not seen as wrong or not appropriate.

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So, for example, wearing sportswear in the newsroom, right?

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That would be seen as something that's not appropriate. I don't know, actually.

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I don't know the answer to that question because I am not a middle class person,

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and I feel that maybe that's something to ask middle class people if I just don't know.

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Can I hazard a guess? Yeah. As an outside observer, that it seems to me like.

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You are not you personally. The one is being regarded as.

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At the most basic level. You can't be as intelligent as me because you aren't wearing the right clothes or sounding the right syllables.

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Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, or at least that's the impression that I sometimes get.

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It's so insidious because it's it's not. It's not.

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I don't even think people are aware that they think that.

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I mean, sometimes people are aware that they think that.

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But I think it's so ingrained in society that it's not even something it's time to fault that people might notice that they have.

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I want to start talking a little bit about solutions.

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What would a working class journalist need in a UK newsroom to feel a sense of fairness and respect?

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A lot of the problem happens before people even make it to the journalism industry.

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There are a lot of things we could do in terms of recruitment to improve working

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class representation in newsrooms having 98 percent of new journalists,

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you know,

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having a degree is one is one way of filtering out a lot of working class people who would be great journalists because you don't need a degree,

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you don't need to write a dissertation. You know, to be able to be a generalist, you need to.

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You need training to be a journalist. Right. I I think and I actually think we have to be around.

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There isn't enough. There isn't enough specific journalism training.

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So, for example, the next day is specific journalism training and you can do it as an apprentice.

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You can leave school at 16 and you can train to be a journalist. And that system works really well for recruiting working class people.

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What we've got at the moment is kind of the opposite of that.

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Where we have the barrier to entry is you have to complete a very expensive degree in which you do.

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You do all these things. You have to support yourself financially to even get to that point.

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And you have to write a big, long academic dissertation.

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In most cases, and it's just not it's not something that someone who is good at journalism would necessarily be good at,

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say, a manager is ready to throw out the old system.

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Right. So here you've identified the blockers.

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They're structural. Stop looking at CVS for what university did you go to and what degree did you get?

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What should you be looking for?

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Well, when I when I run a Start-Up news organisation, it was very small, but we were almost all working class and I didn't ask for CVS.

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In fact, I specifically requested dancing to see and if they sent a CV, then I ignored their application.

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I gave them like based a simple exercise.

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So I asked them to write, have a go at some headlines for an article and to pick out what they thought was the best quote.

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And and that was it. And you know, if if they if what I got back from that made some sense, then I invited them in.

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You know, I wasn't interested in what university people went to.

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And actually, if anything, I was more interested in the people who didn't go to university.

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They were great. They were practical people. Often they had their perspectives that when often seen and they added so much.

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And I think sometimes people who go to a very good university are very good at doing certain things in a certain way.

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And they don't necessarily think outside the box because actually think outside the box is not useful when you are,

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you know, getting good grades and applying for a good university. So, yeah, so that's one thing I think I think we reached.

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You've really got to address any internal biases that you might have, and everybody who is involved will think, Oh, OK.

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So the problem with that is it's very, very hard to do in the society that we live in because we live in such a classist society.

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So, you know, just the other day I was watching, I started watching a sitcom that was full of really appalling class stereotypes and classes tropes.

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So the family in this in this sitcom were portrayed as being lazy, being kind of scroungers.

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The mom in the sitcom said she didn't work. And the joke was that she said, for obvious reasons, all something in my condition.

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And it wasn't clear what her condition was. So there was like a notion of that.

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Maybe she was some kind of scrounger, like a real lack of ambition.

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And in the sitcom, the working class characters were a kind of foil for the an almost like a prop for the middle class people on a moral as well.

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And you know, we as an industry have so far to go on this stuff.

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So when we talk about a newsroom culture that more than one class ethnicity, sexuality,

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et cetera, gender can feel a sense of belonging in what is that culture look like?

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OK, so I guess it depends on. The news right now,

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there are places where there is there is actually probably no benefit to them or

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very little benefit to them to extend their bubble further than it already is.

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And the kind of benefits you'd get through that they won't necessarily get because they

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are targeting a certain audience and that certain audiences is defined broadly by class.

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So I think disregarding. Those kind of situations, you know, let's OK,

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let's take a well-meaning newsroom that really does want to have a more representative staff and do better content and get more readers and,

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you know, a broader range of readers. OK, so there's a real, tangible benefit to having working class people in the newsroom.

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And it's about discussions that you might have internally about the kind of content that you want to do.

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It's about being able to speak to different groups of people.

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You're going to get loads of really good ideas and stories because because of that.

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And I think it's it kind of comes down to that. It's like there's just a bit of a desire,

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like there's just a bit of a gap when writing about working class people in the newsroom that I, oh, you know, cost of living crises.

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What can we do? Food Bank, you know, or Universal Credit, you know,

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and the same idea is being recycled over and over because there's nobody in that newsroom saying, Oh, well, actually, these are the real problems.

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And actually, I'm speaking someone the other day about this. And you know, this is what's actually happening.

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I think that's it.

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And I think we have really poor media literacy in this country and quite poor participation from people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

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And that's purely of our own making.

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That's purely because we don't do the kind of content, you know, within journalism that they that they want to read.

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Write all these. We don't talk about them. You know, that's it.

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It's the recognition from the newsroom. We're not going to get these stories.

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We're not going to get the story right. We're not going to tell every aspect of the story without your contribution.

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And again, that's going to require a conversation happening first, like, Hey, what background are you from?

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And feeling actually safe and open in this environment, say, Oh yeah, my my dad works at as done right.

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My dad works at ASA and I identify as working class. OK, great.

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Now I know that I can come to you and talk to you for perspective on this thing.

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But if that conversation isn't had.

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Then nobody wants to make assumptions, so there's just this sort of weird tiptoeing around the conversation and not having it.

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Yeah, but I think we're so far away from being from people really being able to, oh, you know, a lot of people really been being able to be honest,

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I'm being able to say that in most rooms, you know, and I think it has to be a culture shift within the newsroom.

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That's not something you can ask your staff to do. Hey, please make this place feel open and safe for everyone.

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It's literally it has to come from leadership where they've shown a commitment to addressing this issue.

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They've invited contribution.

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There's been a willingness from the leader themselves to be aware of their bias in themselves and in the system that they're curious

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about the different cultures that people are coming from and different life experiences that they're bringing to the table that they

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themselves are culturally intelligent because they've had these conversations and that they're then creating the conditions for these

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conversations to happen safely and openly so that working class journalists can feel valued for their actual working class backgrounds.

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I actually, I think, is actually that we don't that we already know what what the implicit biases are and we already know what is and isn't classist.

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The problem is that some people think classism is okay, and that's that's where it starts.

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So, you know, when someone makes fun of someone's accent, it's not because we don't have the words to describe,

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you know, making fun of someone's accent is it's because no one ever said, Don't do that.

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Is this an example of where you would hear, Oh, it's just a bit of banter?

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Yeah, exactly. If there's training that needs to be had, the training needs to be we our newsroom that when people do this, we call out, OK.

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And that's the way we make it more inclusive.

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It will be very easy for people to get out of this by saying, Oh, like, you know, we don't know what class means.

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Yeah. You know, people have always made fun of each other's accent, and I wouldn't mind if someone made fun of my accent.

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And but I think deep down, everybody knows that is not appropriate.

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You're right, you're a hundred percent right. And yet there's a contradiction in what you're saying because on the one hand, you're saying,

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we shouldn't have to have these conversations, you know what's wrong and right?

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Other hand, you're saying nobody wants to talk about this yet we don't want to talk about this yet.

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It's too soon to have these conversations without it becoming really, really awkward.

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And there's something in me that's wondering if it's so difficult to have these conversations

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because we're worried about shaming people if we have these conversations and.

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Having that concern, oh, will that person feel uncomfortable or ashamed if I ask them if they're working class or

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middle class presumes that there is something to be ashamed of in being working class?

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It's morally neutral or it needs to be. It should be.

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I think it's actually kind of more complicated than that as well,

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because it's like people will agree that there's absolutely nothing wrong with being working class,

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but it's seeing those working class identifiers as there's identifying characteristics as something other than being working class.

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That's where the problem comes from a lot of the time when people mix up.

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Something that's not going to fire and class with something that seems to be a personal failing.

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So, for example, lazy, yeah. So like it in flight scrounger, unintelligent?

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Yeah, there's so much shared understanding of class.

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Well, that doesn't get said. Actually trying to say those things now who?

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He's actually quite hard, you know, it's quite hard to do that kind of thinking, Yeah,

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if I were to summarise key takeaways for me, what I've learnt from you is that it's really,

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really key that despite how awfully painful and awkward the conversation is,

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we do need to create safe spaces where people from different classes can come together.

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And genuinely just have a conversation about what those implicit biases are, because until you've heard that verbalised,

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you're going to have a very hard time confronting implicit bias in your workplace to the point of actually fixing this problem.

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I think you're probably right. Yeah. The good thing is I felt like there is an appetite.

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You know, a lot of appetite in this industry to improve things. And and I think the problem is that nobody's done any thinking whatsoever.

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You know, sometimes I've been asked before, you know, Oh, how do we know when someone's working class?

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What do we do about it? And it's like, Well, you know what?

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The problem is, really, you know, if you if you spend five minutes thinking about your organisation, you know what the problem is.

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You can find a way to solve it yourself. It doesn't need me to write a framework where you know, it takes all these boxes, you know?

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I find it quite difficult sometimes to have this conversation in a really kind of

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open and genuine way when I feel like often I'm being asked questions from people.

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Not not in this conversation right now, but I mean,

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I'm being asked questions sometimes from people in news organisations that I haven't made even the smallest effort to address it and seem somehow,

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you know, are acting like they're baffled by how this has happened.

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So, yeah, so I think I think that's maybe why I'm why it's so difficult to articulate it and why it's so difficult to give advice.

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You know, and body positivity, they have the sentence. All bodies are good bodies.

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Yeah. What would that sentence be for class? I don't know.

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I don't know. Is there like a class positivity movement?

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Do we need like a Jameela Jamil? Can you be out Jameela Jamil? Like class positivity sort of movement.

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I feel like people have what they think is class positivity.

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I don't. I feel like I feel like the working class have class positivity.

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I feel like the middle classes and the upper classes need to get on board the damn train.

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Yeah. Yeah, maybe you're right.

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Robin, I want to thank you for actually articulating really well, the problem where you think we can start looking for solutions?

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Thank you to those of you who stayed with us. Our guest today was Robin Venter at Northern England Correspondent,

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and you can follow our podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

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If you don't want to miss any news from the institute, subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link on our Twitter bio or on our home page.

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Thank you for listening to Future of Journalism, Typekit and myself, and we'll be back to.