[shortformblog]

The nature of journalism is that outlets report on things that are happening in the world. If these stories were just long opinion pieces about why former coal miners should code, that would be one thing and the criticism would be valid. But each of these pieces linked is literally a reported out piece about actual people and groups teaching people to code.

You could probably go back and forth on whether the idea condescends to blue-collar workers. But the fact is, there wouldn't be these stories if the trend didn't exist and there wasn't a legitimate effort to make it happen before a reporter gave someone a call.