Lit Crit Femsplainers

A Diversity Problem That Nobody is Talking About

I have written elsewhere in this blog about the overrepresentation of female English Literature Graduates, from Oxbridge in particular, in our media. Most of these journalists have pronounced feminist leanings. See The Feminist Glass Escalator, Laura Bates and the axis of radicalisation. For an amusing account of how that degree can lead to radicalisation of the more gullible, see this conversation between Helen Pluckrose and Andrew Doyle. For a more detailed critique of the Literary Theory courses that may have coloured the thinking of these journalists, see The Stifling Uniformity of Literary Theory in Quillette.

Below is an incomplete list list of English Literature graduates working for our daily press that was compiled on an ad hoc basis by researching journalists as their names cropped up. I expect the list to continue growing over time. The newspaper affiliations I have given simply reflect where I saw an article that piqued my interest. In many cases these are freelance journalists pursuing what must be an insecure and precarious freelance existence.

Name	Newspaper*	School	University	Subject
Katherine Viner	Guardian (Ed)	State	Oxford, Pembroke	Eng Lit
Marina Hyde	Guardian	Private	Oxford, Christchurch	Eng Lit
Arwa Mahdawi	Guardian	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Alexandra Topping	Guardian + F	state	Oxford	Eng lit
Hadley Freeman	Guardian	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Emma Brockes	Guardian	?	Oxford, St Edmunds	Eng Lit
Gabby Hinsliffe	Guardian	?	Cambridge Queen College	Eng Lit
Sirin Kale	Guardian	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Alison Flood	Guardian	?	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Imogen West-Knights	(F) Guardian	Private	Oxford	Eng lit
Jane Martinson	Guardian	State	Cambridge, Christ’s	Eng Lit
Laura Barton	Guardian	Private	Oxford, Worcester	Eng Lit
Emma Hughes	Guardian	?	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Flannery Dean	(F)+ Guardian	?	Toronto	Eng Lit
Catherine Bennett	Guardian		Oxford	?Eng Lit
Carol Cadwalladr	Guardian	State	Oxford	?Eng Lit
Rachel Cooke	(F) Guardian		Oxford	?Eng Lit
Stephanie Merritt	Guardian	?	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Jessica Murray	Guardian	?	Leeds	Eng Lit
Lucy Mangan	Guardian	?	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Fiona Harvey	Guardian (environment)	?	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Nancy Jo Sales	(F) Guardian	Independent	Yale	Literature
Laurie Penny	(F) New Statesman,Guardian	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Katherine Swindells	New Statesman	?	Sheffield	Eng Lit, Hist
Pandora Sykes	(F) Guardian		Leeds	Eng Lit
Rebecca Solnit	(F) Guardian		San Francisco	Eng Lit
Clare Finney	(F) Guardian	?	Durham	Eng Lit
Nicola Slawson	(F) (Guardian intern)	?	Leicester De Montfort	Eng Lit
Adrian Horton	Guardian		Harvard	History + Lit
Sarah Manavis	New Statesman/ Guardian	?	Edinburgh	Eng + Hist
Camilla Long	Times	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Nell Frizzell	(F) Guardian	?	Leeds	Eng Lit
Pippa Crerar	Guardian	Private	Newcastle	Eng Lit
Rowena Mason	Guardian	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Pippa Crerar	Guardian		Newcastle	Eng Lit
Jessica Elgot	Guardian	private	Nottingham	Eng Lit
Katy Guest	Guardian		Cambridge	Eng Lit
Rachel Areosti	Guardian		Durham	Eng Lit
Helen Rumbelow	Times	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Eleanor Mills	Times	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Clare Foges	Times	?	Southampton	Eng Lit
Megan Agnew	Sunday Times	?	Bristol	Eng Lit
Alison Pearson	Daily Telegraph	State	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Zoe Strimpel	Daily Telegraph	Private	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Olivia Utley	Daily Telegraph	?	York	Eng Lit, Art
Jemima Lewis	Daily Telegraph (F)		Bristol	Eng Lit
Madeline Grant	Daily Telegraph	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Jane Shilling	(F) Daily Telegraph	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Kerry Potter	(F) Daily Telegraph		Cambridge	Eng Lit
Claire Cohen	(F) Daily Telegraph	State	Birmingham	Eng Lit
Charlotte Lytton	Daily Telegraph	?	Birmingham	Eng Lit
Christina Patterson	Independent (F)	?	Durham	Eng Lit
Harriet Williamson	Independent (F)	?	Warwick	Eng Lit
Louise Boyle	Independent (climate correspondent)	?	Edinburgh	Eng Lit
Holly Baxter	Independent	?	UCL	Eng Lit
Franki Cookney	(F) Independent	?	Durham	Eng Lit/Psychol
Roisin O’Connor	(F) Independent		Swansea	Eng/Creative Writing
May Bulman	(F) Independent	State	Southampton	Eng/French
Angela Epstein	(F) Independent	Private	Manchester	Eng Lit
Phoebe Snedker	(f) Independent		Birmingham	Eng Lit
Emma Burnell	(F) Independent	?	Kent	English /sociology
Olivia Petter	Independent		Bristol	Eng Lit
Bel Trew	Independent/Times	?	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Emma Clarke	(F) Independent	Private	Oxford	Englit
Hannah Fearn	Independent, Guardian	?	Manchester	Eng Lit, Philosophy
Ellie Fry	Independent	?	Leicester	Eng Lit
Emily Atkinson	Independent	?	Birmingham	Eng Lit
Kaye Townsend	(F) Independent	?	Warwick	Eng Lit
Lydia Spencer-Elliott	(F) Independent, Grazia Vice	?	Exeter	Eng Lit
Isobel Lewis	Independent		Manchester	Eng Lit
Ella Doyle	(F) Independent	?	Sussex	Eng Lit
Liza Ketcher	Independent	?	Exeter	Eng Lit
Eleanor Busby	Independent		Exeter	Eng Lit
Isabel Hardman	Spectator	State	Exeter	Eng Lit
Cathy Newman	C4 News	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Emily Maitlis	BBC Newsnight	State	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Naga Munchetty	BBC News	State	Leeds	Eng Lit
Ione Wells	BBC News	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Kate Garraway	ITV News	State	Bath	Eng + History
Victoria Derbyshire	BBC News	State	Liverpool	Eng Lit
Mary Harrington	Unherd		Oxford	Eng Lit
Ella Whelan	Spiked		Sussex	Eng Lit
Tanya Gold	Spectator	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Sarah Ditum	Guardian +	?	Sheffield	Eng Lit
Helen Lewis	(F) New Statesman	Private	Oxford	Eng Lit
Juliet Jacques	Guardian, New Statesman	State	Sussex	Literature and Film
Karisma Vaswany	BBC News	?	Warwick	Eng Lit
Lara Owen	BBC News	?	Leeds	Eng and Chines Lit
Helen Boaden	BBC		Sussex	Eng Lit
Katie Stallard	Sky News	?	University College London	Eng Lit
Hatty Collier	The ‘i’	?	Sheffield	Eng Lit
Victoria Finan	Yorkshire Post	?	East Anglia	Eng Lit + History
Sally Chatterton	Unherd	?	Birmingham	Eng Lit
Laura Bates	Freelance	Private	Cambridge	Eng Lit
Sarah Graham	Freelance	?	Warwick	Eng Lit French
Victoria Smith	Freelance	?	Leeds	Eng/Italian
Abigail O’Leary	Daily Mirror	State	Leicester	Eng Lit
Kate Dennett	Mailonline	State	Sussex	Eng Lit
Kathryn Knight	Mailonline (F)	?	Oxford	Eng Lit
Harriet Johnston	Mailonline (F)		Glasgow	Eng Lit
Maria Chiorando	Mailonline (F)	?	Royal Holloway	Eng Lit
Rachel Moss	Huff Post	?	East Anglia	Eng Lit
Faima Bakar	Huff Post		Queen Mary London	Eng Lit
Kate Nicholson	Huff Post		Bristol	Eng Lit
Nadine White	Huff Post, Independent	State	UCL	Eng Lit

There are some obvious limitations to my approach. I do not have a list of all journalists so I can’t say what percentage of the total are English Literature Graduates. My list is clearly incomplete, many journalists are a little bit coy about revealing their degree specialisation and schooling. There are some journalists such as Janice Turner at the Times, who I suspect are English Lit graduates but their profiles only stay BA Hons. Even the female journalists who were not English Lit graduates mostly came from a humanities background at Russell Group universities.

Not all of these journalists are bad. Mary Harrington is always worth reading, whether you agree with her or not. Hadley Freeman who writes for the Guardian is at least capable of displaying a degree of humanity alongside her feminist writing. Sirin Kale has just written a really good article in the Guardian about lorry drivers (mostly male) ‘The hidden life of a lorry driver‘ – I was pleasantly surprised, almost shocked, to see this article in Guardian of all places.

What about male journalists? That is a work in progress, but it is already clear that they are a more cognitively diverse group. Furthermore, men are rarely asked to comment on gender issues. Women, it seems, have a monopoly of wisdom in this area.

Does the preponderance of Eng Lit graduates matter? I believe it does for reasons I have outlined in previous posts. Take, for example, Fiona Harvey who writes about the environment for the Guardian. She has no relevant training and expertise and predictably falls back on feminist clichés when reporting environmental issues. She tells us that ‘women are on the frontline in terms of vulnerability to the climates crisis.’ Really? Humankind is on the frontline, men and women. Toxic and myopic nonsense like this hampers a proper response to the climate emergency. Journalism matters and that is why we can not afford narrow-minded ideologues reporting on the evolving climate crisis.

For another example, look at the writing of Rachel Moss in Huff Post. Reporting on the decline in women under 30 having children, Rachel plunges straight into an attack on men accusing them of immaturity. Have men become less mature than they were in the 1960s? Rachel doesn’t provide any evidence for that point of view and I rather doubt that they have. It is more likely that this is a multifactorial problem. For example, housing costs more and it takes couples longer to acquire enough resources to make them consider raising a family. Childcare costs are also prohibitively expensive for some couples. Male behaviour might also be changing, but that could be a rational decision based on the anti-male bias of the family court system and the potentially ruinous consequences of divorce. Men could be, as psychologist Helen Smith tells us, ‘going on strike‘. The issue is an important one that requires a more complex and nuanced discussion than Rachel Moss seems capable of providing.

We urgently need a more cognitively diverse range of journalists and that should mean a lot fewer English Literature graduates with depressingly similar and predictable opinions.