Excerpt from:
https://www.usermag.co/p/high-agency-silicon-valleys-new-hot-buzzword
The journalism industry is truly fucked
Back in 2016, when I was living in D.C. and covering politics for
The Hill, I became friends with another reporter named
Miranda Green. Miranda is a phenomenal journalist and we both ended up in L.A. near each other. Miranda has always been a heads-down worker, focused on breaking major stories and holding power to account. She is a talented, brilliant, and a dogged investigator. She’s everything a newsroom should want in a journalist.
About a month ago, after a grueling job hunt, she landed a gig as a national investigative reporter at the Huffington Post. It seemed like a great job and I was so happy that she landed somewhere that would support her essential journalistic work.
But yesterday, just one month after she started,
she was laid off as part of a round of cuts that eliminated her entire desk.
The fact that something like this could happen to a journalist as prolific as Miranda is an indictment of the media industry. Miranda has exposed egregious wrongdoing by the oil and gas industry. She’s written about how an Alabama power company
seized control of a local Black newspaper. She’s
exposed utility regulators taking millions from the industries they oversee. She
used satellite analysis to expose a BP-owned company for selling carbon credits on trees that aren’t in danger. Just
take a look at some of her recent reporting here.
She was a finalist for the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Her investigation into a grassroots seeming anti-solar group that had ties to a conservative political activist won second place in the 2024 National Headliner Awards for investigative collaborations. She is also a multi-media superstar with experience in broadcast media, podcasting, and writing.
Miranda has reported for nearly every major outlet including
The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York Magazine and more. While she primarily covers climate-related news, she has insane range. In 2023 she revealed that, after possibly the most expensive jewelry heist in U.S. history,
Brink’s security company went after the victims. She covered the 2021 insurrection,
profiling Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was shot that day and died. Just this week she was writing about how Trump is
targeting key environmental employees who help prosecute polluters.
All of this is to say, that if someone like Miranda can get laid off and struggle to find a job in journalism, no one is safe. The mainstream media is riddled with problems, and I strongly believe that a robust independent media ecosystem is preferable to a billionaire-backed corporate media landscape, but we desperately need journalists right now. The American public is less informed when journalists like Miranda can’t do their crucial reporting, which is essential to hold power to account.
I have no idea if anyone reading this knows anyone (ideally in L.A.) hiring an investigative reporter or someone with her skills, but
here is Miranda’s LinkedIn. If you’d like to connect with her, even for part time work, just let me know I’d be happy to pass along her direct info.
) if it's done to people she doesn't like. No bad tactics, only bad targets.
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Let's bring back social shaming! 
