Journalist Eyal Press Visits BBA

10/20/2022

Last week, award-winning journalist Eyal Press came to meet with BBA students taking journalism, cinematography, and Farm and Food Studies courses.

Press’ most recent book, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, takes a behind-the-scenes look at what press calls America’s hidden jobs: “I wrote about people who do hidden jobs–that we all kind of know are happening, but we rarely see what is actually happening, and we rarely hear from the people who actually do them.”

Among the jobs Press covers are drone pilots who carry out military strikes, guards who patrol America’s prisons and undocumented workers at industrial slaughterhouses.

Press answered student questions about his approach to journalism today: “You don’t just sit in your chair and look at a screen. You need human stories, and to get human stories you need to talk to real people and have conversations. You need to find those people in creative ways, because if you just ask the people in the public relations department, you’re going to get an article that reads a lot like a public relations announcement . . . and that’s not reporting.”

Near the end of the visit, one student asked, “What is your process when you hit a dead end with a story?”

Press assured students that this is very much part of the process: “If you want to become a reporter, you’re going to assume that you’re going to hit dead ends all the time. It’s just part of the process. Doors don’t open easily. Anyone who gets a Pulitzer Prize or breaks a story that gets national news, or does work that is recognized and distinguished, by definition they have gotten information or a story that was difficult to find. If it was easy to find, everyone would have already found it.”

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