Michael O’Connell
As more and more journalists begin demanding better hours, better pay and more benefits. The idea of unionizing their newsrooms is becoming more common. But perhaps is not as common as it should be. I’m Michael O’Connell, welcome to It’s All Journalism. Rebekah Sanders is a consumer protection reporter with The Arizona Republic. She recently co authored a study about unpaid overtime leave at Gannett with the News Guild. And Megan Taros is the south Phoenix reporter for the Republic, Rebekah and Megan, welcome to It’s All Journalism.
Rebekah Sanders & Megan Taros
Thanks for having us.
Michael O’Connell
Usually I like to start these things, finding outa little bit about my guests, you know how they get interested in journalism. Let’s start with you first, Rebekah. What got you interested in journalism? And how did you end up at the Republic?
Rebekah Sanders
Well, I actually started getting interested in journalism, because I babysat for a journalist down the street, and he would send me home with stacks of New Yorker magazines and Phoenix New Times and other great journalism. And so that sparked my interest. I was just incurably curious and realized that it was a profession where I could ask endless questions. And that sounded like a good deal to me. So I started by interning at the Arizona Republic where I grew up. And almost 15 years later, I’m still at the newspaper.
Michael O’Connell
I’ve had a lot of guests on this podcast, you were the first one to say that they they got into this because they were babysitting.
Rebekah Sanders
Stroke of luck.
Michael O’Connell
So cool. Stoke of luck. OK, cool. So how about you, Megan, how’d you get interested in journalism? How’d you end up in the Republic?
Megan Taros
The short story is that in high school, I was a freshman in high school, and I knew I like to write, but I was thinking about what I wanted to do. And I just kind of realized, like, I don’t really know what I would do with an English degree. And I wanted to help people. And I didn’t really see myself as helping people in the way I wanted to as like a fiction writer. So I talked to my English teacher, and I said, you know, I really want to write and I really want to help people. And I’m kind of stuck here. I don’t I don’t know what to do that fits both of those interests. And fortuitously, she was also the advisor for the campus newspaper, and she said, Well, you could be a journalist. And that set everything off, I started reading the paper more and getting more interested in news. And it’s been that way ever since.
As far as is joining the Republic, I’m actually here on a grant, the Report for America grant. It places journalists in newsrooms looking to expand their coverage or fill coverage gaps. And I was actually in Idaho as part of my first newsroom for Report for America, covering Latino affairs was the first time that the local paper in Twin Falls, Idaho had a Latino affairs beat. But then I saw that the Republic had an opening for the next year to cover Black and Latino communities in South Phoenix. And it just sounded like an incredible opportunity. And, you know, I signed myself up and I got this position, and I’ve been here for about almost two years now.
Michael O’Connell
Are you still in on that grant? Or is it something sort of expanded from that?
Megan Taros
I’m still on the grant. Yes.
Michael O’Connell
OK. So the reason you’re here is the study that was done with the News Guild about the unpaid leave. So what was the situation? How did how did this come about?
Rebekah Sanders
Well, the study that we conducted through News Guild, and it was really conducted by fellow investigative and data journalists all across the company that owns the Arizona Republic, Gannett. It was to look at pay equity in newsrooms around the country and to see if the trends that we’ve seen in so many industries were the same at America’s largest newspaper, are women and people of color paid equitably to men and white journalists? And the data doesn’t lie, the data show definitively that there are massive pay gaps that point to pay discrimination in many newsrooms at Gannett.
And this is the first time that newsrooms across Gannett have been looked at in this way, and that the studies have been released publicly. I, way back in 2016 and 2017, had been asking Gannett through every official channel that you’re supposed to go through from, you know, talking to HR to talking to the women’s employee resource group to talking to the company’s ethics committee to talking to managers about looking at pay equity at the company. In fact, at the time, the vice president of news was doing a book tour in 2017, for this book that she wrote about women in the workplace and demanding what we’re worth. And I approached her and said, Boy, wouldn’t it be great for Gannett to look at pay equity for women at this huge media company? And she was retiring And she said, Oh, yes, yes, we’ll do that talk to HR. And yet, as we continued to ask, we were told, No, no, we’ve looked at the issue. There’s no problems. But no, we won’t show you the data, we won’t show you what we found. Just trust us. There are no pay gap problems that Gannett, which was a little bit strange for journalism executives to tell journalists because if there’s anyone in the world who does not simply trust, but requires verification, it’s journalists. We want the documents. We want the data. We don’t take people’s word for it. We want to see it in black and white. And so that strange non-transparency from the company actually helped to spur our unionization effort at the Republic. And once we unionized, we had the legal right to request salary data from the company and get it and analyze it ourselves. And use all the best practices for pay equity analysis that are out there. So this was a landmark study that we released in April of this year, 2021. And the findings were were pretty stunning, and showed that Gannett actually had been lying to us about pay equity in our newsrooms.
Michael O’Connell
Did this spring out of the Arizona Republic’s newsroom?
Rebekah Sanders
It was a joint collaboration between the Arizona Republic and other union newspapers at Gannett, such as the Palm Beach Post and the South Bend, Tribune. So we looked at around 450 employees.
Michael O’Connell
Let me back up a little bit about the unionization effort. How difficult was that you’ve been here 15 years. So you’re obviously there through the process was, was that something that you guys really struggled to make happen? How willing was Gannett to have union shops?
Rebekah Sanders
Gannett was not very happy with our unionizing drive. But it was such an incredible experience because we had been essentially taught through so many years of layoffs, and pay cuts and shrinking benefits, that this is just the way it was and don’t complain, put your head down and suffer. And by unionizing, what we realized is that it sounds cliche, but it is true, we’re stronger together. Once we started linking arms and listening to each other’s experiences, with, you know, low pay or with problems with the health insurance or unpaid overtime, we started realizing that we all had issues that we could solve together if we were united, and that’s really all it’s about is just supporting each other and saying, we’re not going to be exploited. We’re professionals who deserve to be paid a living wage, who deserve decent benefits and respect. And we do important work that underpins American democracy. The company should invest in us because we keep this company alive. It was a tough unionizing process. But News Guild was there for us every step of the way. And we won our election two years ago with flying colors. And we’ve been bargaining for a good contract and able to do things like this pay study, or we’ve prevented layoffs for two years now. We’ve saved our 401K that Gannett cut for non-union journalists, so many things that have come out of our effort has been positive.
Michael O’Connell
What’s your take on this? Megan, what have you been able to observe in your two years there?
Megan Taros
Yeah, I mean, part of the reason that I became involved in some of the pay equity things is that I noticed that everyone’s experience with pay and overtime, were different depending on their beats, depending on who their managers were, you know, initially, you know, I had a difficult time getting overtime. It was not viewed as an option. I was really in the dark about what I was being paid. And that’s how it compared to other reporters. And then I got a different editor and things changed. And it made me start to wonder why is this happening? Why is there no transparency in this newsroom? And the more I talked to people, the more I realized that everybody was on a completely different page. And I don’t think that people’s experiences should be driven based on the beat they’re on or the manager they have. And I think, you know, newsrooms and and news companies like Gannett should be held accountable and should have a standard that they can be held accountable to. I think, some of the reasons that newsrooms get away with this is that everybody is just conveniently one step removed from the conversation. And it allows them to sort of haphazardly apply their policies to people and people will be inevitably disadvantaged by it. And I think it benefits news companies to not have a baseline to be held accountable to so part of the reason that I as I said, that I’ve become so invested in this is that I don’t think that it’s fair number one to sort of be a casualty of this lack of transparency, and that are that people’s careers should be diametrically different depending on who their editor is or what they’re covering or, you know, unfortunately, if they’re people of color, if they’re women. That’s sort of what I’ve been seeing, especially in Gannett.
Michael O’Connell
So I was fortunate myself to have worked in a union shop at a digital website for a large corporation. And I was actually, you know, it was a late in life experience. And I’d been in other newsrooms, which were kind of run like traditional newsrooms, that there was this culture, that, well, you know, the elections coming around, you’re gonna be working, you know, 15 hours a day. And you know, we can’t give you any more money because things are tight, especially in these terrible, terrible economy. And you because of the culture, you want to? Oh, yeah, OK, I understand. We’re all on the same team. But once I ended up working for the the other news site that was run by a corporation, I began to understand that the company is very different than the newsroom and very different than, and they have a very different perspective, and different needs than than the reporter does. It behooves the reporter to be more active in, you know, demanding fairness. You know, there wasn’t a lot of disagreement necessarily what was going on at the company I was at, but there was always this opportunity to go to the union, there was this opportunity to, you know, participate in setting some sort of standards, with the relationship between the business that is, you know, making money off of off your hard work. Talk about a little bit about newsroom culture was it was there, both with like adopting the Union, but also, with this, these questions you’re raising about pay equity and overtime. Was this something that a lot of people in the newsroom were feeling? Was there any sort of resistance that, Nah this is not something that we’re really going to win? Or, you know, what were your thoughts?
Rebekah Sanders
Well, yes, I think that change can be scary, right? We are accustomed to certain ways of doing things and so when someone comes along and says, You know, let’s reimagine it can sometimes cause some fear or some doubt or some questions. So we certainly, you know, had to overcome that by just talking to each other. And coming to the point where we realized we can make a difference, we can make a positive change. And one reason we know we can is because we’ve seen it happen elsewhere. You know, we had seen the LA Times do an amazing job unionizing and winning a really strong contract. And we had seen the benefits that had accrued to long-time newspaper unions at the New York Times and The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal where their salaries were across the board, you know, higher than non-union newspapers, even at smaller regional papers, like in Minneapolis or Philadelphia, you know, they had benefits that we did not have, solely because they had the strength of a union in their corner.
And it remains a decision that each of us has to make, are we going to settle for the status quo, whatever scraps were handed? Or are we going to hope for a better newsroom and work together to build that better newsroom. And, you know, one of the most pernicious myths that is perpetuated in newsrooms by media corporations is that there’s no money available. You know, it’s a little bit shocking that, you know, reporters and journalists who are supposed to be the most skeptical out there, just except from their employer, that there’s no money for raises, but time and again, that is shown to be untrue when these corporations pay out millions of dollars in dividends to stockholders, or as Gannett has done in the last three years paid out nearly $50 million in golden parachutes to executives, or when we unionized, and they wanted to try when we were planning to unionize and Gannett, decided to give out a bunch of raises, trying to stop us from unionizing. Suddenly, the money is there. So it’s really about priorities for money. And what we’re doing together, through News Guild is saying the priority needs to be investing in the journalism, investing in the employees not spending it in other places that don’t matter.
Michael O’Connell
Again, from personal experience, I was asked at one time to take a pay cut. And I agreed to do it. And when I spoke to another employee about it, he was like, no, they asked for it. And I told him, No, I wouldn’t. And so then, like, I was like, Well, then why did I do it? And it never really sort of made sense to me after that. And I began to think about my relationship with the people I was working with very differently after that. So you request that the study gets done, how is the information gathered, whose opinions whose input are you are helping to inform this, the survey.
Rebekah Sanders
So the survey was done with Gannett’s own salary data, we basically did a, you know, records request to the company. It’s a right that you win when you unionize, to make records requests of the company. And so a team of very highly talented award-winning data journalists from across Gannett came together. And we took this data we anonymized it, and we started looking at the trends just like you would with any data set that you get from any government agency. We started looking for the patterns. And some of the key findings were that women of color earned a median of $16,000 less than white men and women earn about $10,000 less than men. And one argument against the study has been well, women of color and journalists of color in our newsrooms are by and large, younger, and white and male employees are by and large, older, so of course there’s going to be a pay gap. OK, well, that is a contributing factor. But number one, why don’t we have experienced women and experienced journalists of color in our newsrooms? That’s problem. And number two, even when we controlled for age and experience, we found major pay gaps.
For instance, women who worked at Gannett newspapers, at least 30 years, you know, most of their career were earning $27,000 less than men who had the same amount of experience at Gannett. So there were really big red flags. And we also found that our newsrooms, by and large, were whiter than the communities we served. We looked at the racial demographics of the counties where these 14 newspapers were located. And 13 of the 14 newsrooms did not match the racial demographics of the region that they covered. And then lastly, really amazing statistic, we were able to compare the newsrooms that had been unionized for decades, compared to the newsrooms, who had just recently unionized, like at the Arizona Republic, and don’t yet have contracts. We don’t yet have all of the benefits of, you know, a higher pay floor and cost of living and experience raises that our colleagues at, you know, the Detroit Free Press and the Indianapolis Star, and Milwaukee have in their contracts. And what we found was long-time union newsrooms, their pay gaps were much smaller than those in the newsrooms that had only unionized recently. And we believe that that’s because unionizing and gaining a contract sets a floor and it sets expectations for raises over time, that can’t be manipulated by, you know, favoritism or just random, arbitrary decisions that are made in a non-union newsroom.
Michael O’Connell
Before the study began. Were you aware of the disparities regarding people of color and women of color? Is that something that you suspected? Yeah,
Megan Taros
I mean, I think you’re this was something that was on everybody’s minds. And also, like, right before this happened, I mean, we started like, it was the first domino fell, and like a wave of people who are leaving our newsrooms majority have been people of color. I mean, we’ve lost about a, I want to say, a quarter of our newsroom during this pandemic. And, you know, a significant number of those people have been women, and people of color and people from marginalized communities. And I think this is just a general problem with news. So it always makes me laugh, when news companies say that they value diversity, or they prioritize diversity. And therefore, there’s nothing to worry about. Because we see it over and over again, that people who are most vulnerable, when it comes to leaving this industry are people of color and women.
You know, part of it and part of my involvement here and pay equity is kind of twofold, because I’ve been a pretty strong advocate of including language in our contract that values diversity and retention and values, including the newsroom in these efforts. Because I think there’s a lot of people who know this is happening, but they’re not really sure what the company’s really doing to address it. Because all we ever really get are like these lovely meetings, and, you know, these nice emails talking about, oh, this is what we’re doing. But we don’t really see the results are pretty alienated from the results, if there are any, which, I mean, I do think there there has been some change, but Gannett has wholesale refuse to engage with us on diversity and retaining people of color, and, you know, as a woman of color, it’s just, it’s just incredible to me that, you know, we would talk so much, especially in the last year about how much we prioritize diversity. And yet, Gannett doesn’t want to engage with us. Gannett doesn’t even want to hear what we have to say. I mean, time and time again, you know, making impassioned pleas for why we would like to be involved, at least on this newsroom’s level, to take on pay disparity for women and people of color. And they’ve just said, No,
Michael O’Connell
We’ve talked to a lot of people in newsrooms over the last couple of years, you know, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matter movement, more diverse newsrooms, has been a conversation, you know, that’s been going on. And at the same time, you had this idea of, you know, newsrooms trying to figure out how they can better represent communities that they’re covering. And that part of the problem was that you know, what you brought up there at the very beginning about, about the Republic is the makeup of the editorial team was majority white, majority male, very different than the makeup of the community that they’re covering. And so the push has been if we need to be more diverse, we need to have a more diverse newsroom. And we need to be having conversations and covering a more diverse audience. So it’s all kind of a transition type of thing. And it’s all very kind of vague and everything. Yeah, we know we need to do this, we know we need to do this. So here are these newsrooms do this study. And you have all this evidence that bears this out, these are the problems, you know, maybe if you address some of these pay disparities, maybe if you create initiatives that are going to make, you know, more diverse hiring and retention, that the good thing about that would be that maybe you would actually start reaching some of those communities because the the staff the people are making the decisions at the editorial level, are looking at things from a different perspective and a different life experience. So like good journalists, you’ve got a bed of data here that supports your argument. But I guess what you’re saying is that Gannett has been resistant to making any of these changes.
Rebekah Sanders
Right. And I think that that was one of the most disappointing, but not surprising things that happened in the wake of this pay equity study was that rather than acknowledging that their very talented journalists had done an extremely thorough job identifying a problem that needed to be fixed, Gannett executives, instead resorted to essentially calling their own journalists hacks. And essentially saying, oh, you know, this is such a small sample, you know, it couldn’t possibly reflect the rest of the company? Well, you know, we’re happy to analyze the data of the entire company, just give it to us. And coming up with other arguments for why this study was not correct. And, you know, we would welcome the company trying to do their own analysis, and then showing us how it was done.
We offered before publishing this study, to sit down with the company and walk through every part of it, and they refused. So Gannett loves to tell that it gets these diversity awards and has this commitment. But when it comes down to actually making changes that are significant, and that are set in stone, the company is not willing to. We applaud, of course, that our newsroom has grown in diversity over the past few years that we have wonderful new talent coming in. But why are we unable to retain really incredible women and journalists of color and men and white journalists as well? Why is our retention off the wall? Well, a lot of it has to do with the company not addressing these deep problems of pay and fairness and respect, and all of that. And, you know, it’s as simple as we’ve asked the company to commit in our contract to interviewing two people from an underrepresented backgrounds for every open position, it’s likely that the company is already following some kind of similar policy. And it’s a policy that is so basic, and it’s called the Rooney Rule because it was adopted across the NFL years ago. And it’s adopted it some of the most high profile law firms, including law firms that represent Gannett, and yet the company just won’t agree to it. And we say, you know, this fervor for representing our communities may fade, it’s important to make a commitment that’s legally binding so that we don’t backslide as we have seen newsrooms do in the past, and yet, as much as Gannett touts its diversity commitments that won’t commit to that one simple policy.
Megan Taros
Well, I think it’s hard to let go of power. And they think that we see this manifest in a lot of different ways. You know, of course, the biggest and what we’re talking about right now is pay equity. We see it every day in our lives as journalists of color trying to write from an equitable perspective that accurately reflects our communities, something that we haven’t really seen a lot of in news, you know, I think a lot of people got really excited, you know, to see this wave of change, especially in 2020. But I would caution not to get too excited, it’s still quite difficult to accurately write about a community, I think a lot of people look to the past in journalism with such nostalgia, and it’s difficult to change and it’s difficult to listen.
And I think these are things that happen in newsrooms that are harder to nail down, you know, we can nail down the data which we have with the pay equity study, but it’s really difficult to nail down how many stories in the past year got killed, because somebody who was handling it did not understand the perspective that it was coming from. And I think that making solid changes and adopting policies that the newsroom can see, and feel like they’re a part of, that we can hold people accountable to, will kind of build, create the building blocks to to open up a larger conversation about retention as well, because it’s easy to hire people. And it’s easy to have meetings where everybody’s excited, and they have all these great ideas. But one thing that I noticed that if there’s no buy in, and there’s no accountability, and there’s nothing solid at the end of those meetings, you know, everybody’s just kind of standing around looking at each other like, Okay, you go first, you know, and nothing fundamentally changes. And I think, especially this being something that journalism has truly caused harm in. I mean, sure, journalism has truly caused harm, in communities of color, that, you know, journalists of color also belong to, I think, being unreasonable, to the point that news companies don’t want to engage with us on creating solutions really just says that they don’t value our presence in the newsroom.
And I have a litmus test when I’m reporting, because I tend to overthink and get to in my own head. So I my litmus test is, is this really a complicated issue? Or can I go and ask somebody in the community and say, well, what’s the solution here? And if they can give me a straight answer, then that makes me sort of wonder, well, who’s not engaging here? You know, Is there really no money? Is there really too much going on to prioritize this, you know, communities know what they want and what they need.
And I think in the same way, newsrooms understand what they want and what they need, especially newsrooms like ours that have, you know, we, as Rebecca said, we commend some of the changes that’s been happening that have been happening, this newsroom, we commend the growing diversity of our newsroom. But it’s so funny to me, when companies hire a lot of people of color, and they don’t want to accept the change that comes with it. A lot of ideas are are brewing and people are really interested in collaborating on solutions that work and solutions that will keep them there. And Gannett says no, every time and again, I just think that goes back to not wanting to let go of power, wanting to fill diversity quotas, but not actually wanting to put in the effort that it takes to keep these perspectives in our newsrooms, and it’s so so needed, and Phoenix is 43 percent, Latino and 43 percent White — dead even I mean, in the census that just came out that might have changed, you know, we’re getting to the point where we’re about to be a majority Latino city, and say here that they don’t want to even respond to anything that we’re proposing to them is, it’s maddening.
Michael O’Connell
I can imagine. So these journalists of color who leave? Where do they go? Are they leaving the industry? Are they going to other publications? Are they starting their own outlets, online?
Rebekah Sanders
all of the above. We’re seeing folks who are being hired in other newsrooms for major pay increases, some folks are leaving the industry altogether, and others are going to some new startups that are really exciting. So, you know, we’re glad for folks finding success elsewhere. But there’s, of course, real value in retaining journalists in one place for the long term for all of the sources, that they build all of the institutional knowledge that they bring to the table. If we become just a revolving door, I don’t think it’s good for the quality of our journalism or for the communities we report on and we feel like there are a lot of ways that the company could decide to retain people in a better way,
Michael O’Connell
You just have to figure out a way to show them, so there’s some sort of buy in, I guess, I’m sort of wrapping up here, you know, what advice would you give to other journalists who are in newsrooms, who, you know, want to have a bigger say in, in their future, whether it be pay, whether it be representation? What do you think, Megan, let’s start with you.
Megan Taros
I want to say, you know, every every fiber of me wants to say unionize. And, you know, I don’t I know, not everybody can, you know, but going off that I mean, I do think that there are, as Rebecca said earlier, there’s strength in numbers. I think finding allies is really important. You know, and sometimes even just, you know, this might seem really nitpicky and really meticulous, but even just, you know, cataloging, you know, your contributions to the newsroom. And having that in your corner. I mean, I think self advocacy is difficult. So that’s why, you know, I feel like pushes for unions and pushes, to create a community of allies in your newspaper, as probably the most important thing. I mean, it’s sort of like, you know, we see in in newspapers, you know, if you have a small publication, and you know, city hall wants to charge you like $500 for, you know, your records requests, you know, it’s make or break, whether you have some kind of, you know, somebody in your corner who can help you with that. So I think, staying united and maybe not even with necessarily with people in your newsroom, I mean, just connecting with other reporters and building some strong allies in your corner.
But truly, I think that power dynamics shift, when you bring a union into a newsroom. My career definitely changed after having a union in involved. I was working at a newspaper that claimed that they didn’t have overtime. And it was a small publication. So I mean, if if you weren’t done with your story, I mean, hey, the newspaper wasn’t going to come out. So you have to finish the story. And so we’re sitting here pretending we’re not doing overtime. And there was really nothing that we could do about it, because they, quote unquote, didn’t have money. They didn’t offer overtime. I mean, what does that even mean? So, you know, really building up the people you have in your corner, whether it’s through unions, or whether it’s through just people in the newsroom, backing you and supporting you, and really keeping track of what you’re doing for the newsroom. Because that’s the thing. When you come up the company and you say, I have a lot of unpaid overtime, you’ll find if you haven’t been keeping track, you’ll find that there’s not a lot of evidence backing you up, building yourself up to have defenses for when a newsroom is trying to undercut you and trying to under pay you. I mean, it’s, unfortunately, can really fall on an individual sometimes. I’d encourage people, once they notice things in their newsroom that could be problematic in the future to really keep their eye on it. But ultimately, I think there’s power in numbers and any way you can defend yourself through allies through a union, I think that will bring about like the great the greatest results
Rebekah Sanders
100% They’re there to protect the company, not you.
Michael O’Connell
Yeah. And you can find that out very painfully, when suddenly the person you go to that you think is, you know, your advocate that’s going to help you. And actually, if you have a union, you should go to the Union first. Anyway.
Rebekah Sanders
Yep. 100%. Well, I would absolutely echo everything that Megan has said, that’s excellent. And I would address the folks who work in newspapers who may be more on the privileged side, maybe you’re well paid, maybe you’re white and have not experienced racism. Or maybe you are a veteran who you know, knows how to navigate the system of internal politics and all of that, and come away, well treated to all of those folks. And I would say that includes me, it’s up to us to not just think about ourselves, but to think about those around us and what we can do to use our own standing in the newsroom or our own way of bending power to benefit everyone. And so that can be, for instance, sharing your salary with women or people of color in the newsroom around you, not in a bragging way. But in a hey, you know, I know that newsrooms can be really not transparent about their wage scales. I just wanted to share with you my salary so that if you’re ever in negotiations, and you’re looking for a benchmark, you know, there’s some information for you to go on, you know, or, Hey, let’s get a group together at lunch and talk about our salaries and talk about how we can all advocate for raises for ourselves, you know, if you don’t have a union at your newsroom, or, you know, speaking out and taking some of the brunt away from this so much that rests on journalists of color shoulders, to push for diversity commitments, you know, be someone who works alongside the journalists of color in your newsroom to push for these initiatives. We all need to be in solidarity with each other. And that’s really what I’ve learned through this whole experience is that, you know, what I care about may not be what you care about, and what you care about may not be what I care about, perhaps, you know, my retirement account is the most important thing to me. But for you, you have a child who has, you know, diabetes and needs, you know, expensive drugs, and so you need better health care plan? Well, those are different, but we can both push for each other’s issues, and be in solidarity with each other. So that’s what I think can be really helpful. And also mentoring. I really think that there’s such wonderful things that come out of being a mentor, even informally with people in a newsroom, both for a mentor and a mentee. And so if you’re a younger journalist, seek out those veteran journalists to become your mentor. And if you’re more experienced journalist, seek out those younger folks to just ask out to coffee and talk about what they’re going through and share your own lessons with. So those are two things that I think everyone can do.
Michael O’Connell
Both of you offer some excellent advice about this. This has been a really great conversation I really enjoyed. Please keep in touch. I’d love to hear what happens next in this saga. I hope it’s good. I hope it’s an opportunity for you but also your newsroom to move move forward. Megan, Rebecca, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Rebekah Sanders
Thanks a lot.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
