A personal, journalistic ethnography of the modern American working class, based on the travels and interactions of the author through the American heartland.

Second Class is the most important book you will read all year. A political realignment is coming, and it's my hope that the end result will work in favor of our all-too-neglected American working class. When that realignment comes, Batya and her book will help lead the way.

--Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind

Who is the American working class? Do they still have a fair shot at the American Dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?

While writing this book, Batya Ungar-Sargon visited states across the nation to speak with members of the American working-class fighting tooth and nail to survive. In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories--cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives--as well as what policies they think would improve them. Second Class combines deep reporting with a look at the data and expert opinion on America's emergent class divide, in which the most basic elements of a secure and stable life are increasingly out of reach for those without a college education.

America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty? It's not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of work--and the American worker.

...a timely and entertaining account of how class rivalries as well as political conflicts have shaped and sometimes warped the news industry.--Michael Lind, author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite

Something is wrong with American journalism. Long before fake news became the calling card of the Right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But lately, the feeling that something is off has become impossible to ignore. That's because the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it's woke. Today's newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including antiracism, intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be?

It all has to do with who our news media is written by--and who it is written for. In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century--from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America's elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists' worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades.

The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today's elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.

A personal, journalistic ethnography of the modern American working class, based on the travels and interactions of the author through the American heartland.

Second Class is the most important book you will read all year. A political realignment is coming, and it's my hope that the end result will work in favor of our all-too-neglected American working class. When that realignment comes, Batya and her book will help lead the way.

--Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind

Who is the American working class? Do they still have a fair shot at the American Dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?

While writing this book, Batya Ungar-Sargon visited states across the nation to speak with members of the American working class who are fighting tooth and nail to survive. In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories--cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives--as well as what policies they think would improve them. Second Class combines deep reporting with a look at the data and expert opinions on America's emergent class divide, in which the most basic elements of a secure and stable life are increasingly out of reach for those without a college education.

America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land, where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty? It's not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of work--and the American worker.

Something is wrong with American journalism. Long before fake news became the calling card of the Right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But lately, the feeling that something is off has become impossible to ignore. That's because the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it's woke. Today's newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including antiracism, intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be?

It all has to do with who our news media is written by--and who it is written for. In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century--from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America's elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists' worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades.

The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today's elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.