Media for the Worker: Avoiding Corporate Capture & Maintaining the Labor Beat (ASL)

Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor

How Working People Can Save Journalism and America Without Billionaires

Alissa Quart, ED of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the author of books including “Squeezed”, and Hamilton Nolan, the author of “The Hammer” and the popular substack How Things Work, will discuss the urgent need for a working people’s media. In an age of disinformation, big tech platforms blasting traditional media and audiences divided by ginned-up political hostility, journalism that represents rising inequality is crucial. Indeed, reporting with a pro-labor and a working-class perspective is more necessary than ever: Hamilton and Alissa will talk about how we can create a media that takes that POV and avoids corporate capture.

Alissa Quart is the author of seven books, most recently Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America and the poetry book Thoughts and Prayers. She is the ED of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a journalism non-profit she created with Barbara Ehrenreich. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Guardian, The Atlantic and many other publications. She lives right near Brooklyn Public Library, with her family. For more, see alissaquart.com or insta @alissaquart 

Hamilton Nolan is a journalist who writes about labor and politics. He has written for Gawker, In These Times, The Guardian, the New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the author of the 2024 book "The Hammer," about how the labor movement can save America. His own publication, How Things Work, can be found at HamiltonNolan.com. He lives in Flatbush.