Talk:Undercover journalism

On Ehrenreich's "undercover journalism"

I know that this article is still in an early stage, and in fact there's good ground to debate whether or not it should even exist (perhaps it might be incorporated into investigative journalism), but I was hoping to initiate a discussion relating to Nickel and Dimed and whether or not what the author did actually constitutes infiltrating a community, which I think is a pretty consistent definition for this article.

It's difficult to see how Barbara Ehrenreich infiltrated or uncovered anything at all in that the book is about her experiences working low paying menial labor jobs. In the process, she discovered (gasp!) that jobs that pay low wages and don't demand much skill are difficult to make a living off of. The true conclusion she reached in that book was that she did good by staying on top of her academics and finding like-minded people to help her finance her life. She too could have decided to make a living off Wal-Mart or whatever, but she decided instead to study chemistry and do the hard work and occasional brown-nosing required to find work that she felt more comfortable with. Yes, if you don't do this, expect to be nickel and dimed.

Now, even in, say, retail stores you can move up the chain and gain respect and deal with more difficult tasks and get payed more. But if the work is tedious, or if you neglect to put in the intellectual effort required to obtain these goals, you will more than likely not obtain them. So, if I work at Old Navy as a sales clerk, I need to check out the pay and benefits before I decide if this is the kind of job I can raise a family with, if that's my goal. And if I want to raise a family, then I'll have to work my patooty off, in a line of work that actually pays what will be necessary. I then must research which lines of work are going to be best suited for me, task and payment-wise. Luckily, this is the 21-century and there are computers hooked up to the Internet all over the place, and so the excuses people whip up for not looking before they leap are dissipating... And hey, we all get into ruts, but they are not inescapable. If you work at a maid cleaning service and you think that it's all kind of terrible, then you will want to devote your time to changing your path. To err is human, as is to learn. We all can and will do these things.

Ehrenreich's a brilliant woman and I know she is aware of all of this. Never have I read a book that so strongly advocated equality while simultaneously making a case for class distinctions. --Enderandpeter (talk) 14:43, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

On Daleiden's "journalism"

David Daleiden does not belong on this page, he is an activist not a journalist.

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/28/david_daleidens_no_journalist_his_attack_on_planned_parenthood_was_one_thing_a_failed_takedown_operation/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lp734 (talk • contribs) 18:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)