The Compact article, “The Lost Generation,” by Jacob Savage, went massively viral. It was even shared by JD Vance. The author recounts being unable to find a writing job in Hollywood, which he attributes to being white, and then relays this to other examples, such as the media.
But his examples are not really applicable to the general reader. Hollywood writer, tenured professor, or ‘New York Times columnist’ are quite possibly the most competitive jobs ever. Hardly anyone regardless of race or gender gets those jobs. Even the title “The Lost Generation” is misleading, if by ‘generation’, a tiny subset of the US population who aspire to these highly selective jobs.
Annoyingly, the article jumps or switches between ‘men’, ‘whites’, or ‘white men’ as if these stats are interchangeable, or if it agrees with the author’s thesis. Other times, important info is missing such as the percentages of people who apply by race or gender. It’s possible men or whites are under-represented due to fewer men or whites applying relative to women or non-whites for those jobs, among other factors. For example, women outnumber men among college graduates and enrollment. According to Pew Research, as of 2024, “…47% of U.S. women ages 25 to 34 have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of men.” So we would expect women to be overrepresented compared to men on that basis alone.
These podcaster chuds who tell talented, high-IQ white men to skip college and ‘do the trades’ are setting their audiences up for failure. In addition to earning less, foregoing college means voluntarily excluding oneself from participating in the creation of cultural institutions. You’re just going to be some ineffectual bystander.
Other times, the stats sorta seem as cherry-picking, or it’s hard to make heads or tails of the importance, such as:
In less than a decade, the entire face of the industry changed. The New York Times newsroom has gone from 57 percent male and 78 percent white in 2015 to 46 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024. Condé Nast today is just 35 percent male and 60 percent white. BuzzFeed, a media operation that had been 52 percent male and 75 percent white in 2014, was just 36 percent male and 52 percent white by 2023.
How significant is 75% whites in 2014 vs. 52% in 2023, and if so, how does this compare to elsewhere, or the breakdown by race?
Continuing:
But nothing explains the New Media story quite like Vox, whose explainers dominated 2010s discourse and whose internal demographics capture the decade’s professional shift. Back in 2013, when Ezra Klein came under fire for his start-up’s lack of diversity, Vox Media was 82 percent male and 88 percent white. By 2022 the company was just 37 percent male and 59 percent white, and by 2025 leadership was 73 percent female.
Contrary to how the author blames the post-Floyd ‘racial reckoning’, the evidence shows white males losing ground to Hispanics and Asians, not blacks.
In the case of Vox, the share of “Asian American or Pacific Islander” increased to 12% in 2025 from 8% 2016. Blacks increased from 5% to 10% in that same period. Same for the NYTs. According to the “2024 New York Times Diversity and Inclusion Report,” among “all staff” the share of blacks increased from 9% in 2015 to just 10% in 2025–not exactly a huge amount of favoritism here. By contrast, Asian share increased from 11% to 14%.
Regarding The Atlantic, the Savage writes, “The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 percent male and 89 percent white in 2013 to 36 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024.” But according to the 2024 diversity report, the same pattern shows, with Asians and Hispanics seeing the biggest bump compared to blacks. From 2013-2024 Asian share grew from 4% to a whopping 12%, but blacks only increased from 6% to 9%. Latino/Hispanic share grew from 2% to 7%:
Across all media companies, Asians and Hispanics saw the biggest bump. This agrees with overall demographics trends. According to Pew, “Hispanics made up 20% of people in the U.S. in 2024, up from 13% in 2000.” Given that blacks are 13% of the US population, it’s hard to make a case either Vox, The Atlantic, or the NYTs are uniquely favoring blacks to the detriment of whites as some readers may infer.
Asians are overrepresented in the media relative to their share of the population (roughly 12% versus 6%), while Blacks appear underrepresented (around 8–9% versus 13%). One interpretation is that media representation does not deviate from what would be expected under merit-based selection, assuming group differences in IQ. Accordingly, the racial composition of the media is consistent with demographics and IQ, with higher-IQ Asians seeing rapid growth, rather than being obviously distorted by racial favoritism.
Many people who are white-nationalist-adjacent shared this article out of agreement or saw it as sympathetic to the ‘pro-white cause’, but ‘white’ in the context of this article also means Jewish. It goes without saying Jews are highly represented in the top tiers of academia, prestige media, and Hollywood. Being just 2% of the general population, they absolutely dominate these positions. Asians also have high IQ compared to other groups. So under a purely meritocratic approach to hiring means lots of Asians and Jews promoted to these positions if we go by SAT scores, IQ, and other signifiers of achievement and ability. It won’t necessarily mean more ‘gentile whites’ as some are hoping or inferred.
Also, one needn’t assume a political motive where none is evident. For example, black performers are overrepresented in the WWE. Roughly 20% of the roster is black, compared with about 13% of the general US population. Yet the WWE is not generally viewed as a woke organization, especially given Vince McMahon’s well-known friendship with Trump. Favoritism is thus an unlikely explanation. Maybe black wrestlers resonate particularly well with audiences, or a higher proportion of blacks aspire to wrestling careers relative to whites, or greater athleticism.
Also, professions such as screenwriting are inherently subjective and cannot be viewed entirely through the lens of merit. It’s hard to quantify merit for creative writing in the same way as college admissions, where you can just rank applicants by something objective like the SATs. It’s possible that as America becomes more diverse, non-white writers resonate with audiences better. In conclusion, for competitive, prestigious jobs, white men foregoing college puts them at a disadvantage, and combined with competition from ambitious college-educated women and Asians makes the situation even worse.