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Daily Bafflements

• Today in the Guardian, Baffler contributing editor Barbara Ehrenreich takes on the contemporary challenges of journalists compelled to write on poverty, but too poor themselves to do so. Reflecting that it was her financial success (with her groundbreaking work Nickel and Dimed) that allowed her to write consistently on issues she felt deserved coverage, she examines the plight of younger writers struggling to do this work in a barren industry, writing,

This is the real face of journalism today: not million dollar-a-year anchorpersons, but low-wage workers and downwardly spiraling professionals who can’t muster up expenses to even start on the articles, photo-essays and videos they want to do, much less find an outlet to cover the costs of doing them. You can’t, say, hop on a plane to cover a police shooting in your hometown if you don’t have a credit card.

• Today in innovation: According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, educational technology pioneer George Siemens is “extremely irritated” by the current crop of for-profit “disruptors” who have it in for the traditional college education. On his own blog, Siemens writes, “I was struck by how antagonistic some for-profits are toward public higher education. . . . I’m worried that the future will have an education system where the wealthy continue to receive high quality education on campuses, but the poor receive some second-tier alternative system that prepares them mainly to work but not to be change agents in the world.”

• Over at Vice, there’s a story of a technologically induced bright spot, “How I Infiltrated a White Pride Facebook Group and Turned It into ‘LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama.'”